Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five

Throughout the years of storytelling, most authors follow conventional rules of telling stories. However, there are authors, such as Kurt Vonnegut, who ignore the rules and openly does so. Vonnegut tried several times to create the perfect war book, without being pro-war or stopping war since it is inevitable. Eventually, these desires lead him to create a novel that helps comfort the reasoning behind massacres such as the one in Dresden during World War Two. He changes the standard ways of writing in this novel, Slaughterhouse-Five.

In this story, Billy Pilgrim is a time traveler, causing all methods of time to be insignificant. Adding time travel causes for the removal of foreshadowing. It is also made clear that there is no freewill, causing there to be no changes in his time travel. The first chapter of this novel is Vonnegut explaining to the reader his process of writing this book. Chapter One makes the readers aware of the first and last sentence of the novel. Furthermore, he does not skip over what he had planned for the climax of the story. As a war novel, one is to assume that the bombing of the town would be the climax, but it is not, nor is it the climax given. The climax is very subtle, but it is merely a flashback to the war which goes against Billy’s belief of no freewill. Within time travel, the audience is shown the main character’s death as well as birth. With no control over

The chronology of the story is everywhere due to Billy’s coming unstuck in time. However, Vonnegut brings it back to war. As soon as the story starts to get light, drifting off from the subject of death, the massacre at Dresden is brought back up. In some ways he does this by adding in symbolism such as the colors blue and ivory, and nestling in a spoon. These symbolisms occur throughout the novel as small reminders of the