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This is for English IV AP LIT.

[Sep. 29th, 2008|11:56 pm]

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Slaughterhouse-Five Critical Analysis
By R. Blakely Wentley
Kurt Vonnegut has always had a knack for using writing to express his creativity (or his insanity as the case may be) and Slaughterhouse-Five is no exception. Vonnegut plays around with the idea of time all throughout the book, jumping from event to event with a total disregard for chronology. This style allowed Vonnegut to make a unique novel with a strong anti-war message that is both entertaining and incredibly interesting. Vonnegut takes advantage of this style by creating a sporadic plot line, by manipulating time to serve his purpose, and by including extraterrestrials.
Vonnegut chose not to limit himself with a standard chronological plotline for several reasons. His erratic plot better reflects his overall message of the horrors of war than could a plot that flows smoothly. As F. Brett Cox puts it, this random movement through time is, “…a symbol of the shock, confusion, dislocation, and desire for escape that result from the horrible experiences of war” (Cox). One moment Billy Pilgrim, our protagonist, will be in a box car capture by the Germans, the next he’ll be on an alien planet in the zoo and the next he’ll be at his daughter’s wedding. These events don’t fit together, but neither do the goings-on in war, and that’s Vonnegut’s point.
Vonnegut’s method of writing also opens up many opportunities to draw attention to his message by creating a creative way to set up contrasts and juxtapositions that otherwise would be impossible for the author. For example, Vonnegut would have Billy Pilgrim’s father-in-law sing “humorous” songs about Polish people and the next moment Billy would be seeing a Pole hanged to death in public (Vonnegut 155). This contrast of imagery shows the grisly reality that is war better than just telling about a public hanging would and it’s only through Vonnegut’s style that this is possible.
Vonnegut doesn’t only show us time in forward moving chunks. He also manipulates time by having some things go backwards. One of the strongest anti-war messages he makes is when he shows Billy Pilgrim watching a war movie backwards:
“Over France, a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen…some of the bombers were in bad repair…German fighters came up again, made everything and everybody as good as new” (Vonnegut 74).
When one looks at war backwards, people aren’t killing people, they’re helping each other. After all of the bombs are sucked back into the bombers, the bombs are sent back to America and disassembled, and then:
“The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again” (Vonnegut 75).
Without Vonnegut experimenting with time, he would never have been able to put this profound observation of war into his novel.
Although his style really helps to bring out his message, it would be utterly impossible with out the help of his little green friends the Tralfamadorians. It’s safe to assume that human beings were Vonnegut’s target audience which creates a little problem with the way this story was written. Human beings are only capable of perceiving the world in three dimensions and the concept of time as a dimension is literally impossible for the human brain to comprehend. Having the main character be ‘unstuck’ in time and thus liable to be anywhen at anytime makes it difficult for the reader to follow all of the time. The Tralfamadorians do their best to help Billy Pilgrim understand his situations; the same situation that governs what the reader sees and when they see it. The Tralfamadorians explain to Billy that they can see, “…all time as you might see a stretch of the Rocky Mountains. All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is” (Vonnegut 85-86). They also tell Billy what they think about wars. They say, “…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” (117). The beings that can see every war that ever happened and every war that ever will happen, all happening at the same time choose to ignore all those wars for the simple reason that there are so many things in life that are better than war. Without the Tralfamadorians this book might be lost among the masses and its message with it.
Vonnegut was able to turn such a horrible catastrophe as the Dresden firebombing into a strong anti-war message that is just as powerful today as it was when it was written. Vonnegut pulls you in with an erratic plot line, keeps you entertained with his disregard to the laws of physics as we know them and sends you home with the knowledge imparted onto you by little green men. His novel has remained humorous and relevant for almost 30 years and it’s safe to say that it will for years to come.

Works Cited
Cox, F. B. "Slaughterhouse-Five (Critisism)." Novels for Students. 23 Sept. 2008
<http://www.answers.com/topic/slaughterhouse-five-novel-7>.
Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-Five. New York, NY: Dell, 1991.

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