Book Review: Slaughterhouse Five

The full title of this Kirk Vonnegut novel is, you may remember from the list of books you were supposed to get around to reading, Slaughterhouse-Five; or, The Children’s Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death. I needed a break from pulp fantasy so I decided to tackle something more thought provoking.

This is pretty obviously an anti-war book. The protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, is the world’s worst soldier and witnesses the firebombing of Dresdin, a town in Germany of questionable military importance whose 130,000 mostly civilian inhabitants are obliterated in an Allied bombing towards the end of World War II. This event is the macabre centerpiece of Vonnegut’s examination of war and how it obliterates lives and even free will.

The book’s other catch is that Billy Pilgrim is supposedly a time traveler who inadvertently slides back and forth along the time line of his life. He also describes how he was abducted by aliens and taken to an intergalactic zoo where he’s mated with a beautiful movie star. The aliens teach Pilgrim that time is just another dimension, and that every moment –past present and future– is inevitable and can actually be seen if you know how to look. If someone dies at one point in time, he’s still alive in all the others, so it’s no big deal.

Vonnegut never directly addresses this issue, but it seems fairly evident to me that both the time travel and the alien view towards the same subject are just figments of Pilgrim’s imagination that serve as coping mechanisms for what he saw in the war. If free will doesn’t exist, tragedy isn’t quite so tragic. If you can see the whole stretch of time in one’s life laid out like a mountain range and visit any part of it whenever you want, death loses its bite. But like I said, it’s left to the reader to decide.

So, good book if a bit weird with all the dancing back and forth along the plot line as Pilgrim time travels. It’s thought provoking, Vonnegut is a lyrical writer, and it’s definitely worth a read. But if I were to compare it to other things I’ve read, I think I’ve read at least one book that better communicates the horror of war, and another one that better captures the absurdity. Oh, and I’ve read a better time travel one, too. Still, this one manages to do all three, and that’s something.

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2 thoughts on “Book Review: Slaughterhouse Five

  1. I read Slaughterhouse Five in high school, don’t remember much about it, except the intergalactic zoo and the hotty movie star. I just read your post on the other book about the German infantryman. I’ll have to check that one out. Another anti-war book that I recommend is Dalton Trumbo’s, Johnny Got His Gun. If you haven’t heard of it, you might recall Metallica’s song, One. The song and video were about that book. I also read the Time Travelers Wife and particularly like how the woman’s father and brother thought he was an animal in the bushes and blew him away. I got kind of a creepy feeling during his visits from the future to her farm when she was a teenager. I definately think there could’ve been a 20/20 special by Stone Phillips. Last night Michelle and I watched the Lake House, with Keanu and Sandra. I liked it. Wasn’t exactly time travel, but two people communicating via letter and a magic mailbox living two years apart from one another.

  2. Dude, spoilers! 🙂
    Time Traveller’s Wife is probably going to end up being my favorite book from 2006 (House of Leaves being a close second) unless I come across something really exceptional in the next few weeks.

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