ipl-logo

Kurt Vonnegut: Prisoners Of War

1749 Words7 Pages

Victorious conquerors have taken prisoners of war in conflicts across human history. The foreign prison camps of the World Wars were infamous for their cruelty. However, many people are not aware that millions of German prisoners of war were placed in hundreds of camps all across America. These prisoners had their own unique experiences that differed significantly from prisoners held in foreign POW camps. Kurt Vonnegut voices his own traumatizing prisoner of war experience through the main character of Slaughterhouse-Five. Comparing Billy’s experience with the treatment of POW’s on American soil allows readers to analyze the moral structure of each country.
Sixteen million Americans served in World War II. Four million prisoners were shipped to the United States from 1942 through 1945. As World War II raged, Allies, such as Great Britain, were running short on space to house prisoners of war. Thousands of prisoners of war ended up in U.S. mills, farm fields, etc. Almost 400 camps were built for prisoners of war in the South, the Great Plains and in the Midwest; ironically, while the prisoner camps were filling up across the country, America was struggling with acute labor shortage (“Prisoners of war”). …show more content…

One former soldier, Kerr, recalled that as a prisoner of war in America, he was safe because no one was shooting at him and it was better to work in America; he didn 't have anything to be scared of. Keith Buss, who was a child living in Kansas during the war, remembers, “Four POWs came to his house in search of a job on his family farm in 1943.” (“German Prisoners of war”). The four prisoners of war built the Buss family a concrete garage. Buss said they nailed it, they did a great job building the garage. That garage still stands today. American POW’s camps were clearly not as harsh as camps in other countries (“German Prisoners of

Show More
Related

  • 5 Paragraph Essay On Unbroken By Laura Hillenbrand

    242 Words  | 1 Pages

    In the memoir Unbroken, Laura Hillenbrand and Louie Zamperini show that having a determined mindset can help get through the horrors of POW camps. The POW camp Louie was in was terrible. He would get beaten everyday for no reason and be forced to do hard labor. The author uses words such as “broken”, “fractured, and “shattered” and paired them with the word “POW” to show that the Japanese soldiers had no mercy against the American soldiers. Throughout the POW camp terrible things happen to Louie and he is forced to see horrible events.

    Read More

  • Japanese Prisoner Of War Camps In Unbroken, By Louis Zamperini

    335 Words  | 2 Pages

    Prisoner of war camps were common during World War II. However, the book Unbroken displays the true horrors that were in the Japanese prisoner of war camps. This book captures the life of Louis Zamperini and tells the horrendous conditions that he and other prisoners faced during their time in the prisons. The Japanese internment camps did not fulfill the purpose of the camp, the treatment of the prisoners that they deserved; also the prisoners were given meaningless jobs to fulfill.

    Read More

  • Pros And Cons Of Japanese War Camps

    719 Words  | 3 Pages

    Rough Draft Japanese POW Camps The Japanese prisoner of war camps were prisons ran by savages, with no rules. These camps were built for soldiers that surrendered in World War Two, and lasted until the end of the war. These camps were ran by savages that saw us less than dogs, and treated people worse than the Germans did. "There were many indeed who became so demoralized that they abandoned every tenet of personal integrity, honor, loyalty, and the accepted standards of human behavior.”

    Read More

  • Essay On World War Camp Atlanta

    1498 Words  | 6 Pages

    World War ll: Camp Atlanta It may surprise you that during World War ll (WWll), here in America, we also had Prisoner of War (POW) camps. What might be even more surprising is that there were even a few here in the state of Nebraska. There were many POW camps in Nebraska, but who would have guessed there would be a camp in Atlanta, Nebraska, a little town of one hundred thirty-one people. The thousands of prisoners held in Nebraska, the design of the Camp Atlanta, and last but not least, what the conditions were like inside the camp are three of the main points to discuss.

    Read More

  • Japanese Internment Camps In Lord Of The Flies

    1810 Words  | 8 Pages

    These prisoner were of the enemy race. The Nazis imprisoned Jews while

    Read More

  • Cold War Japanese Internment Analysis

    1337 Words  | 6 Pages

    Some of the able bodied men enlisted into the military, this showed true loyalty. The ones who didn’t were watched carefully. Inside these camps the living conditions were poor. During the winter they had to deal with low quality heating. Amongst the persecution they received they created a community.

    Read More

  • Archetypes In Slaughterhouse Five

    673 Words  | 3 Pages

    Throughout Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut intertwines reality and fiction to provide the reader with an anti-war book in a more abstract form. To achieve this abstraction, Kurt Vonnegut utilizes descriptive images, character archetypes, and various themes within the novel. By doing so, he created a unique form of literature that causes the reader to separate reality from falsehood in both their world, and in the world within Vonnegut’s mind. Vonnegut focuses a lot on the characters and their actions in “Slaughterhouse Five.”

    Read More

  • Comparing Slaughterhouse-Five And Things They Carried

    599 Words  | 3 Pages

    Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Slaughterhouse-Five chronicles the life of Billy Pilgrim, a fictional character loosely based on Vonnegut’s own experiences in World War II. The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien’s fictional novel that is set during the height of the Vietnam War. Both authors incorporate fact and fantasy scenes in their writings, albeit in different contexts. Vonnegut’s novel travels throughout time and brings the reader to both non-fictional and fantastical scenes. Conversely, O’Brien’s novel is written in chronological order, but also incorporates fact and fantasy into the timeline of the story.

    Read More

  • The Importance Of Paw's Jobs During WWII

    1429 Words  | 6 Pages

    On Sunday, November 29th at 10:39 am, I started the research about my topic. I wasn’t in the best mood, but I had to finish this research and find my answer. The first thing I did was go open up a web browser, Google, and type in, “What did Jewish prisoners work during WWII.” It took me to Wikipedia and there was a section on the page called, “Forced Workers.” It talked about how people were put into labour camps depending on different categories of inmates.

    Read More

  • Thesis For The Things They Carried

    999 Words  | 4 Pages

    The True Weight of War “The Things They Carried,” by Tim O’Brien, brings to light the psychological impact of what soldiers go through during times of war. We learn that the effects of traumatic events weigh heavier on the minds of men than all of the provisions and equipment they shouldered. Wartime truly tests the human body and and mind, to the point where some men return home completely destroyed. Some soldiers have been driven to the point of mentally altering reality in order to survive day to day. An indefinite number of men became numb to the deaths of their comrades, and yet secretly desired to die and bring a conclusion to their misery.

    Read More

  • Billy Pilgrim Quotes Analysis

    1055 Words  | 5 Pages

    Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut, is a postmodern, anti war novel, involving the main character, Billy Pilgrim, and his transportation through the different moments of his life. The timeline of this particular book ranges all the way from when Billy was a small boy and all the way to his death. Because of the book taking place in many different times of Billy’s life and in many places of it, Kurt Vonnegut both hides and reveals truth in it. Many examples of this can be found throughout the events of Billy’s adventures, most notably before and during the fire bombings of Dresden.

    Read More

  • Fiction And Reality In Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

    1413 Words  | 6 Pages

    Hidden somewhere within the blurred lines of fiction and reality, lies a great war story trapped in the mind of a veteran. On a day to day basis, most are not willing to murder someone, but in the Vietnam War, America’s youth population was forced to after being pulled in by the draft. Author Tim O’Brien expertly blends the lines between fiction, reality, and their effects on psychological viewpoints in the series of short stories embedded within his novel, The Things They Carried. He forces the reader to rethink the purpose of storytelling and breaks down not only what it means to be human, but how mortality and experience influence the way we see our world. In general, he attempts to question why we choose to tell the stories in the way

    Read More

  • Summary Of The Best War Ever Sparknotes

    756 Words  | 4 Pages

    While the effort of America was important in winning the war, there was a lot of discrimination and prejudice against blacks, Native Americans, women, and homosexuals within the military. The men who fought in the war saw terrible conditions and many had mental breakdowns. This chapter in the book explains the deaths that many soldiers witnessed and how many men became separated from humanity. This caused many soldiers to become insane. The final two chapters in the book talk about changes in the American society throughout the war and the results from the war.

    Read More

  • Irony In Kurt Vonnegut's 'Slaughterhouse Five'

    1076 Words  | 5 Pages

    Storytelling has been the epitome of human expression for thousands of years. Along with musicians and artists, talented storytellers use their work to share ideas with others, often in an effort to evoke emotion or to persuade people to think similarly. Every element in a story is carefully crafted by the author in order to communicate a desired message to his or her audience. In Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut incorporates irony into the story to express his belief that fighting wars is illogical.

    Read More

  • The Dresden Bombing In Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five

    1745 Words  | 7 Pages

    Dresden was one of the world’s most beautiful cities full of life and culture up until the Dresden bombing that destroyed innocent civilian lives and burned the historic town of Dresden to ashes during World War II. The bombings, resulting from the ongoing war is named the worst civilian casualty bombings and the most questioned. The bombs dropped by the Allies were unexplained because the bombs were not aimed at any war material headquarters or at a base of any Axis powers. The Dresden bombings were a catastrophic unnecessary point of attack. In Kurt Vonnegut’s book Slaughterhouse-Five, the Dresden bombings are discussed as well as highly influencing to the book as a whole.

    Read More

More about Kurt Vonnegut: Prisoners Of War

Open Document