Essay about Slaughterhouse-Five A Peace Novel - 1419 Words

War is a tragic experience that can motivate people to do many things. Many people have been inspired to write stories, poems, or songs about war. Many of these examples tend to reflect feelings against war. Kurt Vonnegut is no different and his experience with war inspired him to write a series of novels starting with Slaughter-House Five. It is a unique novel expressing Vonneguts feelings about war. These strong feeling can be seen in the similarities between characters, information about the Tralfamadorians, dark humor, and the structure of the novel. Kurt Vonnegut is an American novelist from Indianapolis, Indiana, born in 1922. A very important part of his life was when he served in WWII where he was taken as a prisoner of†¦show more content†¦This kinship can further connect Billy and Vonnegut together. Since Vonnegut is a fourth generation German, it is possible that Vonnegut could also have a cousin that was a Nazi soldier (Biography). Though it may be a fa r stretch, a further connection the two have is the name of their hometowns. Billy was from the town of Illium, Illinois and Vonnegut was from Indianapolis, Indiana. The correlation between the two cannot be ignored. Billy could very easily be a way for Vonnegut to show the emotions that he felt during the war to the rest of the world. The anti-war message is upheld further with the ironies that Vonnegut provides in the book. One example is when one of the soldiers, a POW, survives the fire-bombing, but dies afterward from the dry heaves because he has to bury dead bodies (Vit). When Billy and one of his comrades join to other scouts the Vonnegut portrays as well trained, Vonnegut displays irony by killing the skillful scouts and allows the less competent Pilgrim and Roland to survive. Roland does eventually die because he is forced to walk around in wooden clogs that turn his feet to pudding. The greatest example of irony is seen in what Vonnegut claims to be the climax o f the story. He explains the situation before the story even begins. He is referring to the: Â…execution of poor old Edgar DerbyÂ…the irony is so great. A whole city gets burned down, and thousands and thousands of people are killed. And this one AmericanShow MoreRelated Slaughterhouse-Five Essay: Three Themes of Slaughterhouse-Five945 Words   |  4 Pages The Three Themes of Slaughterhouse-Five nbsp; Kurt Vonnegut did a great job in writing an irresistible reading novel in which one is not permitted to laugh, and yet still be a sad book without tears. Slaughterhouse-five was copyrighted in 1969 and is a book about the 1945 firebombing in Dresden which had killed 135,000 people. 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Certainly, when E.M Forster wrote A Passage to India or J.R.R Tolkien wrote The Hobbit or Kurt Vonnegut wrote Slaughterhouse -Five they were not looking for anything. However, they ended up finding a crucial link in their books–links to society at the time their books were published. 1924, 1937, 1969 or is it 1890, 2157 (Shire reckoning), 1945-It is not possible to be