Slaughterhouse Cinco

Slaughterhouse-Five

Over the two week Christmas break I read the novel Slaughter House Five by Kurt Vonnegut. It is a novel about a man named Billy Pilgrim who happens to be schizophrenic looking back on his experiences and tragedies he suffered while being a POW in WWII. He was sent to the Battle of the Bulge where he almost immediately was captured behind German lines. One thing I found odd about this book but also interesting was the fact that Billy Pilgrim would “time shift” to a later part in his life where he was also abducted by aliens and sent to the planet Tralfalmador. On this planet he was observed as a sort of zoo animal, and he had no chance of escape for the atmosphere of Tralfalmador is made up of cyanide. Then he would switch back to the times when he was taken to a POW camp in a slaughterhouse during the firebombing of Dresden, Germany. He is one of the few survivors out of a whole incineration of 135,000 people.
I would have to say I enjoyed reading this novel. It was around 300 pages and it went by really fast. Although I would have to warn anyone who considers reading this or any of Kurt Vonnegut’s novels that he is a little nutty from World War II. He actually witnessed the firebombing of Dresden so its understandable that he could possibly be suffering from PTSD or “shellshock” as they would call it in WWII. Vonnegut was actually a POW who was put in Slaughterhouse number five by the Germans. Ironically animals would go to a slaughterhouse to get killed but in this novel the slaughterhouse was a shelter preserving the only lives in the entire city of Dresden. But once you get past that fact that Vonnegut is a little crazy, the novel actually becomes filled with hilarious stories and irony. All the factors of Billy’s odd life really make this book a trip. At times I found myself bursting out in laughter either at irony or just for the reason that the plot was so comical. A very funny part in the novel was when Billy Pilgrim was on Tralfalmador with another abducted woman named Montana Wildhack. They are having sex for the first time and the Tralfalmadorians find it so amusing. This book is an anti-war satire, filled with amusing stories leaving you intrigued and not able to put the book down. Everyone else I have talked to about this novel enjoyed it deeply except for one person who ultimately couldn’t stand Vonnegut’s style of writing. At times it got a little weird, for instance, whenever someone dies (which happens a lot) the sentence always ends with “so it goes”. This book also contains funny limericks, which you will find yourself repeating and laughing at days later.
All and all I found this a great book to read over break. And I had no troubles finishing it before the break ended. I would have to say I have a fixation for war novels rather than any other novels, but still it doesn’t contain much gore or blood at all. So yes I would recommend this to all who can stand a weird but hilarious anti-war satire.