Slaughter house five

“Slaughter-House-Five” by Kurt Vonnegut is structured around two main plots. With in the book Vonnegut goes back and forth often displaying the events during two main times of Billy Pilgrim’s life and how they created his person. Billy Pilgrim is the central character of the book and ultimately what they book is about. The book is interesting in that Billy goes through extreme scenarios of life that most of us can’t relate to; this is what makes Billy so interesting. He was born in 1922 in Ilium, New York; he was an only child to a barber. Billy was a funny looking kid “shaped like a bottle of Coca-Cola”. He went into the Army and spent time in Germany which reshaped his life; He was present at the bombing of Dresden. These experiences are what a lot of the book is based around. Kurt Vonnegut introduces a biographical stand point in his novel because he was stationed at Dresden during the bombing. He intermingles some of his actual experiences into the novel. After the war Billy went onto marry, raise two children and get rich, but we don’t learn much about those years of his life. The other main setting comes in while Billy gets into a plane crash in Vermont and is the only survivor. During this time he was abducted by an alien group called the Tralfamadore. When Billy returned to New York he aired on an all night radio talk show. Billy spreads the message of time and perception that he learned from the Tralfamadore. The Tralfamadore have secret truths as to how major world dilemmas would be avoided. There theories are much different than our own and I would recommend reading this book even to just hear these different theories. It forces the reader to open their mind to new ideas. The book goes back and forth with flashbacks Billy has from the war, Tralfamdore, his current life and the way people interact with Billy. The way Vonnegut describes Billy’s situation is he “is spastic in time, has no control over where he is going next, and the trips aren’t necessarily fun.” Even though Vonnegut talks about some serious issues he always makes the book fun and entertaining often creating humor with in it. It’s hard not to laugh at some of Billy’s war situations that seem more fantasy than reality because they are so ridiculous and funny. Even at Tralfamdore there is dry humor during his interactions with the species that acts formal and serious in his presents. I guarantee this is like no book you have read before it makes humor in what other wise would be a very serious subjects. I recommend this book from its interesting theories and different ways of viewing life and death. Also for its compelling events and dialog. I believe you would enjoy this book as much as I did.