Essay on Slaughter House Five - 842 Words

Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Slaughterhouse Five shows the life of Billy Pilgrim through a twisted tunnel of reality. Pilgrim is raised in Ilium, New York and grows up to become an optometrist but shortly after is drafted into World War 2. This soldier’s life is not shown as a straight line where you’re born in the beginning and die at the end but rather as a scatter plot of time due to Billy’s time traveling ways. â€Å" Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time. Billy has gone to sleep a senile widower and awakened on his wedding day† (Vonnegut 29). With Billy unstuck in time it leaves his body traveling back and forth through time. Kurt Vonnegut also uses elements of science fiction to highlight the ills of modern society and the perils of†¦show more content†¦Vonnegut reinforces the ideology of the perils or warfare through Billy Pilgrim. Pilgrim experiences many hardships during his time throughout World War 2 and his time in Dresden. B illy and his fellow American soldiers endure many hardships such as overcrowding, no food and the weather is to harsh, on their long voyage to the prison camp. Not only was there very little room on the train but no one would let Billy sleep next to them due to Billy’s wild night terrors. This led to Billy having to post himself up in the corner of the stagecoach in order to sleep standing up. â€Å"Billy Pilgrim was lying at an angle on the corner brace, self crucified, holding himself there with a blue and ivory claw hooked over the sill of the ventilator† (Vonnegut 101). This musters up the image that Billy looked like Jesus Christ on the cross which Billy is also compared to during the novel. Upon the trains arrival at the German prison camp, Billy’s attire did not resemble that of an American Soldier. Billy Pilgrim had no shoes or jacket and it was in the middle of the harsh winter. After getting of the train and stepping foot on the cold dead soi l of the camp, Jackets are taken from the dead corpses of dead prisoners and given to the so called â€Å"newcomers†. The coats are given out in little frozen clumps as if they cant even be worn and it is Billy who receives the smallest and least effective looking coat. â€Å" The coatShow MoreRelatedThe Slaughter House Five Centers1944 Words   |  8 Pages Slaughter House Five centers around how Billy Pilgrim is affected after experiencing the bombing of Dresden during his service in World War II. Pilgrim s journey through the war impacted the rest of his life, arguably ruining it, and causing him to have PTSD. The creation of the aliens in Pilgrim s head caused him to look at the world differently, and allowed him to be absolved from most of his guilt. The way Pilgrim reacts to the deaths that surround him also shows his new perspective on lifeRead MoreThe Movie Slaughter House Five 1810 Words   |  8 Pagesof Warfare During February 1945, World War II had long begun, affecting millions of people throughout the entire world. Disease and famine were faced by both civilians and soldiers, and the casualties were about 80 million. Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughter House-Five mostly takes place during the war, specifically during the time of the infamous Dresden bombing. The main character, Billy Pilgrim, is an American soldier who lived to tell, and was present during, the bombing. It is through Billy Pilgrim’sRead MoreGeorge Orwell s The Slaughter House Five1302 Words   |  6 PagesViews on War in Vonnegut s Slaughter House Five Many people returned from World War II with disturbing images forever stuck in their heads. Others returned and went crazy and terrors faced. The protagonist in Slaughter-House Five, Billy Pilgrim, has to deal with some of these things along with many other complications in his life. Slaughter House Five (1968), by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., is an anti-war novel about a man’s life before, after and during the time he spent fighting in World War II. WhileRead MoreKurt Vonneguts Slaughter House Five Essay504 Words   |  3 PagesSlaughter House Five Expaination Based on Kurt Vonnegut Jr.s book by the same name, Slaughterhouse Five has been described by many as one of the best anti-war novels of the 20th Century. In Slaughterhouse Five, Billy Pilgrim finds unstuck in time jumping between several periods of his life. From his experience as a prisoner of war in World War II to his suburban family life in the 1950s and 1960s, and his experience as a human specimen in an alien zoo on a distant planet, Billy seemingly hasRead More Views on War in Vonneguts Slaughter House Five Essay1328 Words   |  6 PagesViews on War in Vonneguts Slaughter House Five    Many people returned from World War II with disturbing images forever stuck in their heads. Others returned and went crazy due to the many hardships and terrors faced. The protagonist in Slaughter-House Five, Billy Pilgrim, has to deal with some of these things along with many other complications in his life. Slaughter House Five (1968), by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., is an anti-war novel about a man’s life before, after and during the time he spent fightingRead More Looking Into the Past in Vonneguts Slaughter House-Five Essay1006 Words   |  5 PagesInto the Past in Vonneguts Slaughter House-Five In the spring of 1945, near the end of World War II, American and British bombers rained a hail of fire upon the city of Dresden, Germany. With an estimated 135,000 dead, Dresden is known as one of the deadliest attacks in History, nearly twice as many deaths than the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Kurt Vonnegut was among the few who lived through the firestorm; he wrote a book about it in fact. Slaughter House-Five (1969) is a fictional recountRead More The Downside of War in Kurt Vonnegut Jr.s Slaughter House Five527 Words   |  3 PagesThe Downside of War in Kurt Vonnegut Jr.s Slaughter House Five Many people view soldiers in war to have nothing more than a duty that they must perform; so they see war as being outrageous or ridiculous. In the novel Slaughter House Five (1968),written by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Billy Pilgrim, who is a soldier in World War II, is captured and becomes a prisoner of war. Billy is seen as the protagonist. He is moved to various prison camps until he finally ends up in Dresden. Dresden is bombed andRead MoreBilly Pilgrim and the View of Time in Slaughter House Five by Kurt Vonnegut1178 Words   |  5 PagesThe year is 1944, 1945, 1964, 1967, 1968, and 1976 as Billy Pilgrim becomes unstuck in time. For many of us we see time as a river. It drifts listlessly from the springs to the ocean. We cannot touch the same waters twice. In the Novel Slaughter House five by Kurt Vonnegut, Billy Pilgrim discovers the true abounding nature of time. And that time is not a river, but the entire ocean, every water molecule a moment in time existing all at once in th e vast blue of eternity. In 1967 Billy PilgrimRead MoreAnalysis of Chapter 3 of Kurth Vonneguts Slaughter House Five1553 Words   |  7 Pages In this essay I will be stylistically analysing an extract from Chapter 3 of Kurt Vonnegut’s novel; Slaughterhouse Five. I am particularly interested in the effects different perspectives have throughout my extract, as well as the effects of the narrative structure and if it conforms or diverges from the typical models of narrative structure. I am also going to be analysing the characterisation of different figures in my extract and the impressions these give on the characters. I will also be lookingRead MoreGeorge Roy Hills Movie Adaptation of Kurt Vonneguts Slaughter-House Five1100 Words   |  5 PagesGeorge Roy Hills movie adaptation of Kurt Vonneguts novel Slaughter-house Five is a fairly accurate version that stays relatively close to Vonneguts own vision. Throughout Vonnegut novel Billy Pilgrim, a WWII soldier who was captured by the Germans and held captive as an American POW (prisoner of war), demonstrates several extreme compulsive tendencies due to the horrific ev ents he witnessed as an American POW victim. After reading of Billy’s experiences, I did not have faith in the movies ability