Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Paperback | Pages: 275 pages Rating: 4.08 | 1075601 Users | 25392 Reviews
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| Original Title: | Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death |
| ISBN: | 0385333846 (ISBN13: 9780385333849) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Characters: | Billy Pilgrim, Kilgore Trout, Eliot Rosewater, Roland Weary, Paul Lazzaro, Edgar Derby, Robert Pilgrim, Valencia Merble, Barbara Pilgrim, Howard W. Campbell Jr., Montana Wildhack, Bertam Copeland Rumfoord |
| Setting: | Dresden,1945(Germany) Tralfamadore Ilium(United States) …more Ardennes,1944(Belgium) …less |
| Literary Awards: | Hugo Award Nominee for Best SF Novel (1970), Nebula Award Nominee for Best Novel (1969), National Book Award Finalist for Fiction (1970), Chicago Publishers' Award (1970) |
Commentary Concering Books Slaughterhouse-Five
There are some terrible reviews of SH5 floating around Goodreads, but one particularly awful sentiment is that Slaughterhouse-Five isn't anti-war. This is usually based on the following quote."It had to be done," Rumfoord told Billy, speaking of the destruction of Dresden. "I know," said Billy. "That's war." "I know. I'm not complaining" "It must have been hell on the ground." "It was," said Billy Pilgrim. "Pity the men who had to do it." "I do." "You must have had mixed feelings, there on the ground." "It was all right," said Billy. "Everything is all right, and everybody has to do exactly what he does. I learned that on Tralfamadore."For context, Mr. Rumfoord is an old military historian described as "hateful and cruel" who wants to see weaklings like Billy exterminated. On Tralfamadore, Billy was introduced to the revelation that all things happen exactly as they do, and that they will always happen that way, and that they will never happen any other way. Meaning, time is all at once. The aliens, incidentally, admit to destroying the universe in a comical accident fated far into the future, and they're very sorry, but so it goes. <- passive acceptance The entire story up to this point has been about Billy, buffeted like a powerless pathetic leaf in a storm, pushed this way and that by forces entirely outside his tiny purview. He lays catatonically in a hospital bed after the plane crash and the death of his wife, and all the time traveling back and forth from Dresden where toddlers and families and old grannies and anti-war civilians were burned alive in a carefully organized inferno (so it goes), and Billy is about ready to agree to absolutely anything. It can't be prevented. It can't be helped. You're powerless, after a while. What hope have we, or anyone caught in the middle of a war, or even the poor soldiers who are nothing but pawns and children (hence the children's crusade), to influence these gigantic, global events? Therefore, Billy agrees with the hateful, the cruel Mr. Rumfoord, who is revising his military history of WWII, having previously forgotten to mention the Dresden bombing. Women and children, not evaporated instantly, but melted slowly by chemicals and liquid flame, their leftovers, according to Billy, lying in the street like blackened logs, or in piles of families who died together in their little homes. Incidentally, how can anything be pro-war or anti-war? Because being anti-war is a bit like being anti-conflict, anti-death, and anti-suffering. Is there a book that's pro these things? Is there a book that touches on the subject of war and is not against it? We don't support wars, though we are sometimes forced to accept them. Anyone who thinks that the bombing of Dresden was necessary is delusional. It's like saying, "yo, look how they bombed these innocents - that shit was wrong! Let's go bomb some innocents, too." That's the sad truth of it.
Details Regarding Books Slaughterhouse-Five
| Title | : | Slaughterhouse-Five |
| Author | : | Kurt Vonnegut Jr. |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Deluxe Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 275 pages |
| Published | : | January 12th 1999 by Dial Press (first published 1969) |
| Categories | : | Young Adult. Contemporary. Romance. Fiction. Health. Mental Health |
Rating Regarding Books Slaughterhouse-Five
Ratings: 4.08 From 1075601 Users | 25392 ReviewsCommentary Regarding Books Slaughterhouse-Five
All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE ~~ Kurt VonnegutMy junior year of college, I had a roommate, Don, his nickname was Har Don ~~ which he hated; Har Don loved Kurt Vonnegut ~~ no, he worshipped Kurt Vonnegut. Its ironic since everything Don believed in was the antithesis of what Vonnegut stood for. Don insisted I read Vonnegut's SLAPSTICK. He told me it was the greatest novel ever written. I did, and it isn't. He insisted I wasI read this book first in 1999 when my grandfather passed away. It was a bit of a coincidence as his funeral occurred between a Primate Anatomy exam and a paper for my Experimental Fiction class on Slaughterhouse Five. I was frantically trying to remember the names of all kinds of bones when I picked this up in the other hand and tried to wrap my head around it.Basically, Vonnegut has written the only Tralfamadorian novel I can think of. These beings, most undoubtedly inspired in Billy Pilgrim's
No one really introduced me to this work, despite its resonant presence in the literary canon. I adore books that reek of marvelous postmodern perfume. This is one original, enthralling, always-relevant novel. Vonnegut is brave & cowardly because he makes the material his own, yet he is but scenery... his main character is an Everyman who is sooo affected by the Dresden bombings that he "becomes unglued from time." Yes: war is complete, utter chaos... it becomes something more powerful than
Everything is nothing, with a twist. Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-FiveI've read Slaughterhouse-Five several times and I'm still not sure I know exactly how Vonnegut pulls it off. It is primarily a postmodern, anti-war novel. It is an absurd look at war, memory, time, and humanity, but it is also gentle. Its prose emotionally feels (go ahead, pet the emotion) like the tug of the tides, the heaviness of sleep, the seduction of alcohol, the dizziness of love. His prose is simple, but beautiful.
I miss Kurt Vonnegut.He hasn't been gone all that long. Of course he isn't gone, yet he is gone. He has always been alive and he will always be dead. So it goes.Slaughterhouse-five is next to impossible to explain, let alone review, but here I am. And here I go.What is it about?It's about war.It's about love and hate.It's about post traumatic stress. It's about sanity and insanity.It's about aliens (not the illegal kind, the spacey kind).It's about life.It's about death.so it goes."That's one
here it is. yet another book that i didnt read in school but decided to pick up later in life. and i think this is one of the rare instances where i think i would have benefited from some educational instruction to supplement my reading, because i did not seem to get this on my own.i mean, on a surface level, i understood the anti-war tones and commentary on society in general, but anything deeper than that eluded me. so taking this at face value, i think its safe to say this is a really weird
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