Slaughterhouse 5

Slaughterhouse 5

Amazon: Slaughterhouse Five

Over the summer I bought a number of books, including Slaughterhouse Five. Since I love George Orwell and Aldous Huxley, I figured that I should check out some Kurt Vonnegut, because they seem like they're all in a similar category.

Slaughterhouse Five is about a soldier named Billy Pilgrim, who becomes unstuck in time and relives his past and future moments at random instants. The story itself mainly revolves around the bombings in Dresden.

To call this book an anti-war novel would be a crude simplification. It's against war, but it's also a satire, science fiction, metafiction, and random compendium of thoughts. 

One of the major points the novel makes it that all time happens at the same time. Billy Pilgrim transfers between all of these moments in his life because they are all happening simultaneously. The past and the future all exist. To expand upon this, the novel has the fatalistic view that all events are inevitable, and we do not have the will to change our fate. All we can do is change our thoughts. One of the aliens Billy meets says, I've visited thirty-one inhabited planets in the universe. Only on Earth is there any talk of free will"

What I love most about this book is the style of writing. Vonnegut does not sound like a writer when he writes. I think you guys can figure out what I mean by this. "The radiant sun was gazing across the silver shining water as Freddy took a sip from his delectable cocktail, and though he felt happy, he wondered why he felt so empty on the inside." Excessive detail and shallow emotionality aren't much my taste. In fact, I often prefer non-fiction to fiction for that reason. Vonnegut's writing style is extremely raw, and ever since I started reading his novels, I've tried to imitate it, at least to a certain extent. Perhaps you will see that tomorrow when us writers hand out our literature for talent show day.

I would like to share a few quotes from the book.

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The dog, who had sounded so ferocious in the winter distances, was a female German shepherd. She was shivering. Her tail was between her legs. She had been borrowed that morning from a farmer. She had never been to war before. Her name was Princess. 

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Now he quoted Theodore Roosevelt, whom he resembled a lot;
"I could carve a better man out of a banana."

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And then Billy traveled in time to when he was sixteen years old, in the waiting room of a doctor. Billy had an infected thumb. There was only one other patient waiting--an old, old man. The old man was in agony because of gas. He farted tremendously, and then he belched. 

"Excuse me," he said to Billy. Then he did it again. "Oh God-" he said, "I knew it was going to be bad getting old." He shook his head. "I didn't know it was going to be this bad."

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On the eigtht day, the forty-year-old hobo said to Bill, "This ain't bad. I can be comfortable anywhere."

"You can?" said Billy. 

On the ninth day, the hobo died. So it goes. His last words were, "You think this is bad? This ain't bad."

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Before I end this post, I would like to include a picture of writing tips that I once found on Facebook. It's brilliant