Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five

by Harold Bloom

Captured by Germans after the Battle of the Bulge in World War II, soldier Kurt Vonnegut and other prisoners of war were taken to Dresden, Germany, where they were confined in a cement shed used for... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0791059251
• ISBN13: 9780791059258
• Release Date: January 2001
• Publisher: Chelsea House Publications
• Length: 143 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.5" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

So it goes

Slaughterhouse 5, or Slaughterhouse five, or The Children's Crusade, also called A Duty-Dance with Death, is described by the author Kurt Vonnegut's alter-ego, Billy Pilgrim as a `fourth-generation German-American now living in easy circumstances on Cape Cod [and smoking too much], who, as an American Infantry Scout Hors De Combat, As a prisoner of war, witnessed the fire-bombing of Dresden, Germany, "The Florence of the Elbe," a long time ago, and survived to tell the tell. This is a novel somewhat in the telegraphic schizophrenic manner of tales of the planet Tralfamadore, where the flying saucers come from. Peace.' So it goes. The book is an anti-war book, but tells us that it is about as useful being an anti-war book, as being an anti-typhoon book, meaning that some things will never change. Vonnegut tells us this by giving us the story of Billy Pilgrim, whose most important role in life was to witness the secret American British bombing of Dresden, where 135,000 died, and who spent most of his time as an American Prisoner of War, a survivor who can tell the youth of today what war is all about, by using his shellshock trauma induced time travel capabilities, given to him by the Tralfamadore aliens, to revisit the war, so that he can write a book about it, goes to see old war buddies, becoming unstuck in time, his life as a series of scenes in a non-linear fashion which ends up making linear sense, even though it did not at the time. So it goes. Slaughterhouse 5 is a very interesting and somewhat touching series of events that finally all come home to roost in the final pages, the loss of man is the gain of man, whether we like it or not, is not the point, Darwin told us that this is what we are designed to do, Billy Pilgrim becomes an optometrist in the process, marries a woman who suddenly has a series problem, while Bill ends up in a zoo on an alien planet to produce children with Montana Wildhack, a famous movie actress, while trying to write his Dresdon story, filled with death, a plane accident where he was the only survivor following his POW term, fact from fiction, he thinks the rescue party are nazis, it sets off the time travel again. So it goes. Vonnegut is not all down and war depressing however. His humour captured brilliantly by such antics as considering the money tree that grew hundred dollar bills, gems and bank bonds, feeding off the people who met the quicksand by its base, or a young Jesus who once built a cross with his father so the Romans could use it to do something to a protestor that they didn't like. When the wit is there it scores in aces. You have never read the likes of such clowning around before, although compared to Joseph Heller's Catch 22, this one is more personal, less satirical, more direct and exposes that horrible World War II bombing of Dresden. In 1941 Charles Portal, A British Air Staff officer, put forward the idea that entire cities and towns should be bombed. Air Marshall Arthur Harris agreed i