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Editorial Review Product Description
Kurt Vonnegut's absurdist classic Slaughterhouse-Five introduces us to Billy Pilgrim, a man who becomes 'unstuck in time' after he is abducted by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore. In a plot-scrambling display of virtuosity, we follow Pilgrim simultaneously through all phases of his life, concentrating on his (and Vonnegut's) shattering experience as an American prisoner of war who witnesses the firebombing of Dresden. Slaughterhouse-Five is not only Vonnegut's most powerful book, it is also as important as any written since 1945. Like Catch-22, it fashions the author's experiences in the Second World War into an eloquent and deeply funny plea against butchery in the service of authority. Slaughterhouse-Five boasts the same imagination, humanity, and gleeful appreciation of the absurd found in Vonnegut's other works, but the book's basis in rock-hard, tragic fact gives it unique poignancy -- and humor. Amazon.com Review
Kurt Vonnegut's absurdistclassic Slaughterhouse-Five introduces us to Billy Pilgrim, a man who becomesunstuck in time after he is abducted by aliens from the planetTralfamadore. In a plot-scrambling display of virtuosity, we followPilgrim simultaneously through all phases of his life, concentrating onhis (and Vonnegut's) shattering experience as an American prisoner ofwar who witnesses the firebombing of Dresden. Don't let the ease of reading fool you--Vonnegut's isn't a conventional, orsimple, novel. He writes, "There are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramaticconfrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick, and somuch the listless playthings of enormous forces. One of the main effectsof war, after all, is that people are discouraged from beingcharacters..." Slaughterhouse-Five (taken from the name of the building where thePOWs were held) is not only Vonnegut's most powerful book, it is asimportant as any written since 1945. Like Catch-22, it fashions theauthor's experiences in the Second World War into an eloquent and deeplyfunny plea against butchery in the service of authority. Slaughterhouse-Five boasts the same imagination, humanity, and gleefulappreciation of the absurd found in Vonnegut's other works, but thebook's basis in rock-hard, tragic fact gives it a unique poignancy--andhumor. ... Read more Customer Reviews (792) 
Anti-war Classic
Considered a classic of twentieth century literature, and included in both Time Magazine's and Modern Review's list of Top 100 Books (all of which, by the way, are in your To Think Is Human database), Slaughterhouse-Five showcases the idiocy of war in an original and deeply humorous way -- a feat that few authors have ever been able to accomplish. The story seems funny because it has no linear time line, and thus no ending; Billy Pilgrim, the main character, has "come unstuck in time", and he experiences times of his life -- and death -- in random order.
Needless to say, Pilgrim survived the bombing of Dresden in the meat locker called "Slaughterhouse Five", and his experiences in the war are juxtaposed with his marriage to the obese daughter of the optometrist he works for and with his drunken, late night attempts to re-connect with people who long ago forgot about him. He has also been abducted by aliens from the distant planet Tralfamadore, where he is kept on display under a geodesic dome in a zoo, making love to his fellow captive, the movie star Montana Wildhack, as the aliens watch in fascination.
Throughout much of the novel, Pilgrim is deranged, either from shock at the horrors he witnessed in the war, or from the disorienting effect of being unstuck in time. As an old man, ruminating on the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, and distressed by the carnage of war in Vietnam, the time comes for him to go public with his "unstuck-ness", which makes him out to be a old fool. But we know better. We know what he's talking about; we know what's happened to him. Pilgrim is not un-stuck in time; his world is un-stuck from morality.
The Tralfamadorians sort of see all time at once; they, too, are "un-stuck" in it, and so they experience any point in eternity at will. They also look like those little characters in the Monty Python and Yellow Submarine animations with their eyes in their hands. Pilgrim is a sensation at the zoo, and he tries to learn about reality by talking with the crowds who gather to see him, moderated by a guide who is an authority on Earthlings.
Here's a good passage:
Billy expected the Tralfamadorians to be baffled and alarmed by all the wars an other forms of murder on Earth. He expected them to fear that the Earthling combination of ferocity and spectacular weaponry might eventually destroy part or maybe all of the innocent Universe. Science fiction had led him to that.
But the subject of war never came up until Billy brought it up himself. Somebody in the zoo crowd asked him through the lecturer what the most valuable thing he had learned on Tralfamadore was so far, and Billy replied, "How the inhabitants of a whole planet can live in peace! As you know, I am from a planet that has been engaged in senseless slaughter since the beginning of time. I myself have seen the bodies of schoolgirls who were boiled alive in a water tower by my own countrymen, who were proud of fighting pure evil at the time." This was true. Billy saw the boiled bodies in Dresden. "And I have lit my way in a prison at night with candles from the fat of human beings who were butchered by the brothers and fathers of those schoolgirls who were boiled. Earthlings must be the terrors of the Universe! If other planets aren't in danger from Earth, they soon will be. So tell me the secret, so I can take it back to Earth and save us all. How can a planet live at peace?"
Billy felt that he had spoken soaringly. He was baffled when he saw the Tralfamadorians cose their little hands on their eyes. He knew from past experience what this meant:
Billy expected the Tralfamadorians to be baffled and alarmed by all the wars an other forms of murder on Earth. He expected them to fear that the Earthling combination of ferocity and spectacular weaponry might eventually destroy part or maybe all of the innocent Universe. Science fiction had led him to that.
But the subject of war never came up until Billy brought it up himself. Somebody in the zoo crowd asked him through the lecturer what the most valuable thing he had learned on Tralfamadore was so far, and Billy replied, "How the inhabitants of a whole planet can live in peace! As you know, I am from a planet that has been engaged in senseless slaughter since the beginning of time. I myself have seen the bodies of schoolgirls who were boiled alive in a water tower by my own countrymen, who were proud of fighting pure evil at the time." This was true. Billy saw the boiled bodies in Dresden. "And I have lit my way in a prison at night with candles from the fat of human beings who were butchered by the brothers and fathers of those schoolgirls who were boiled. Earthlings must be the terrors of the Universe! If other planets aren't in danger from Earth, they soon will be. So tell me the secret, so I can take it back to Earth and save us all. How can a planet live at peace?"
Billy felt that he had spoken soaringly. He was baffled when he saw the Tralfamadorians dose their little hands on their eyes. He knew from past experience what this meant: He was being stupid.
"Would -- would you mind telling me -- " he said to the guide, much deflated, "what was so stupid about that?"
"We know how the Universe ends --" said the guide, "and Earth has nothing to do with it, except that it gets wiped out, too."
"How -- how does the Universe end?" said Billy.
"We blow it up, experimenting with new fuels for our flying saucers. A Tralfamadorian test pilot presses a starter button, and the whole Universe disappears." So it goes.
"If you know this," said Billy, "isn't there some way you can prevent it? Can't you keep the pilot front pressing the button?"
"He has always pressed it, and he always will. We always let him and we always will let him. The moment is structured that way."
"So -- " said Billy gropingly, I suppose that the idea of preventing war on Earth is stupid, too."
"Of course."
"But you do have a peaceful planet here."
"Today we do. On other days we have wars as horrible as any you've ever seen or read about. There isn't anything we can do about them, so we simply don't look at them. We ignore them. We spend eternity looking at pleasant moments--like today at the zoo. Isn't this a nice moment?"
"Yes."
"That's one thing Earthlings might learn to do, if they tried hard enough: Ignore the awful times, and concentrate on the good ones."
"Um," said Billy Pilgrim.
"So it goes" is a phrase repeated over and over in the novel, serving as a "non-explanation" for any inexplicable horror or inanity. It became something of a catch-phrase in the anti-war movement of the Vietnam era, especially as the justifications for the war, and the way it was being waged, became more and more nonsensical -- at least, nonsensical from the point of view of the young people who actually had to go and fight it.
Vonnegut's genius in this novel is beautifully demonstrated by the last two lines of the Passage, where the Tralfamadorian suggests a common-sensical solution from his own experience in the same, utterly impossible and uncomprehending way that a military bureaucrat might suggest a campaign that would certainly result in the death of hundreds of his own soldiers. Vonnegut never lingers over these moments. He says "Um..." along with Pilgrim, and then heads off to another ridiculous situation.
Great book for for anyone
The book slaughter house five is a excelent book, that has a very in depth plot.Itstarts out in the point of view of the author, describing how he wrote the book.It then moves into a character who thinks he can move through time.It is almost to fictional to believe but the narator inserts himself into the story to make ist seem real.It allows the reader to decide if it is true story or fictional story.For example, one person might see it as a the character trying to escape reality while someone else might see it as the main character really depressed and drugged out person.Personally, the way I see the character is as a war verteran with PTSD.Even so, every persons opion will differ.
To enjoy this book there are a few key points one should know.
1. The first chapter is written by the author and therefore not in the same point of view as the rest of the book.
2. The bombingof Dreesden was a very large part of the main characters wartime experience.
3. It has some very dark humor, and therefore the whole book should not be taken seriously, rather it is for the reader to decide what is serious and what is a joke.
Absurd, yet Powerful
Slaughterhouse-Five is, as its jacket cover boasts, "one of the world's great antiwar books." Centered around the infamous firebombing of Dresden in late World War II, the novel takes its readers on a ridiculous journey through the life of Billy Pilgrim, a detached sort of fellow who has become unstuck in time. As sad as it is hilarious, Slaughterhouse-Five is a thought-provoking novel whose morals are disguised by absurdity. Be prepared for Vonnegut's refreshingly strange writing style; the book is much more enjoyable if you let Vonnegut carry you away to his unique and darkly humorous world. It takes some effort to decipher the novel's abstruse themes, but there is much to be learned from Billy's search for meaning in a seemingly meaningless world.
A painful, beautiful look at history, violence, and humanity
It's probably been over a decade since I last read Slaughterhouse Five, but after recommending it to a student who's been excitedly reading through it, I got the urge to dive back into Vonnegut's world again. There are few who don't know what Slaughterhouse Five is about, but for the unaware, it's the tale of Billy Pilgrim, a WWII veteran who was present at the fire-bombing of Dresden and now finds himself "unstuck" in time, catapulting around through his life. Of course, it's also the story of Vonnegut himself, as he deals with his memories of Dresden and tries to find some meaning behind it all. There's so much beauty and honesty in Slaughterhouse Five that it's hard to know where to start. Vonnegut's rambling, train-of-thought style isn't for all tastes, but for those who lose themselves in his world, it allows for marvelous asides and powerful moments, as well as Vonnegut's typically cynical optimism. As much of a contradiction as that sounds, it's the only way I know how to describe Vonnegut's work - there's no doubt that he's deeply cynical about the world and humankind, but he nonetheless hopes for better, hopes for improvement and wishes that people could learn from the past. And there are moments of stunning beauty and hope here - for instance, the quiet and profoundly moving sequence when Pilgrim watches a war film unfold backwards, watching as American and German planes slowly suck wounds and shrapnel from the cities and soldiers before delivering the bombs home to be dismantled and taken away where they will never be used again, or the overwhelming pain of the Dresden bombing itself. As much as Slaughterhouse Five is known for its humor, it's a quiet, dark humor, more of a bemusement at the world around it as a satire. But what lingers is not the humor; it's Vonnegut's inimitable, wonderful world view, one that I miss as the world continues to change on a daily basis. But, as the man himself wrote: So it goes.
Precious gems scattered throughout...
A perfect novel?No.Nothing's perfect.A brilliant novel?Yes.One of my favorites.Why?Because Vonnegut had the ability to create humor amidst tragedy.And the storytelling is told in an unpretentious manner.Gems scattered throughout this meandering tale but left exposed for others to discover.This is a literary gift that only an accomplished calculated writer can deliver.Vonnegut was no dummy.In this novel he created a literary device that was - and still is - ingenious.Simply put, it is an anti-war novel in which the mind of a prisoner-of-war veteran becomes, as Vonnegut says, "unstuck in time" - with no control over where he will be next.Maybe not everyone can relate, but I certainly can.It influenced me to become a novelist too.
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