Photo Borrowed from Pinterest.com
War is bad.
Slaughterhouse-Five follows the story of a man named Billy Pilgrim. He was a prisoner of war World War II and survived the bombing of Dresden, one of the worst bombings of the war. However, during the war, Billy becomes "unstuck in time," never knowing which moment of his life he will live through next. Later in his life, he is abducted by aliens called Tralfamadorians, who teach Billy Pilgrim about their own views on life and death.
Kurt Vonnegut's stylistic choices in Slaughterhouse-Five support his theme that war is destructive and should be avoided at all costs.
RepetitionKurt Vonnegut uses repetition of the phrase “So it goes.”, without feeling or emotion, to convey his belief that death is inevitable and he is powerless to prevent it.
|
|
Borrowed from wikipedia.com
"Dresden was like the moon now, nothing but minerals. The stones were hot. Everybody else in the neighborhood was dead. So it goes." |
Parallel ExperiencesBilly's experiences on Tralfamadore help Billy to rewrite his war experiences while also giving him a new philosophy to cope with his guilt of surviving. |
lack of pathosKurt Vonnegut displays an obvious lack of emotion throughout his narrative in order to convey Billy Pilgrims numbness to his own feelings like pain or loss as a result of his experiences before, during, and after World War 2.
|
"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom always to tell the difference."
"Splendid art... a funny book at which you are not permitted to laugh, a sad book without tears." -Life
|
"There is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre...And what do the birds say? All there is to say about a massacre, things like 'Poo-tee-weet?'"