The Dresden Bombing In Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five

In the film American Sniper directed by Clint Eastwood and the novel Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, both works exhibit depiction of war through the protagonist. However, each work is portrayed differently as they each show a representation with opposite depiction of war. While one decides to promote war, the other diminish it. In Eastwood’s adaptation of American Sniper, his insight appears as a promotion for pro-war propaganda, in contrast, Slaughterhouse Five depicts ideas that portray the war in a poor light.

It’s a day that would start a series of events that would change literature forever. So it goes. November 11, 1922, Methodist Hospital, Indianapolis Indiana Edith Vonnegut gives birth to one of the most influential writers of the 20th century, he is named after his father, Kurt Vonnegut Sr. And So it goes. Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was a man of many shades,

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.

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.

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.

History does not always convey the absolute truth. It offers only one side of the story. The strong and powerful voices always drown out the sounds of the weak and beaten. The winner’s word will always be taken over the loser’s. The content that lies within the textbooks was not written by the defeated. To understand the history of past cultures, it is imperative that both sides are heard. Many novels continually showcase this new outlook on history. Kurt Vonnegut’s novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, demonstrates the New Historicism perspective with subjective accounts, reflections of the time it is written, and lack of the opposing side’s outlook.

“The American Library Association listed the book as the 46th most banned or challenged book of the first decade of the 21st century.” (Greene, 2014, para.14) Slaughterhouse-Five had been bashed since it release in March 1969 due to its use of profane language and vivid descriptions of disturbing scenes. It has been banned from multiple schools and libraries all over the world. However, banning this book is only sparring a person from a great book. Slaughterhouse-Five is one the best anti-war ever written. This is thanks to its ability to educate the reader, its unique writing style, and offering a true investigate the horrors of war.

It should be established before anything else that the author I have chosen, Kurt Vonnegut, was heavily influenced by World War II. The idea of war, along with its devastating effects, gave Vonnegut a rather cynical and twisted view on human nature. This perspective bleeds over onto his writing and can be seen in many of his major and minor works, including one of his most impactful, “Slaughterhouse 5,” in which he uses time travel, alien planets, and other farfetched ideas to describe the physical and emotional consequences of violent acts.

For instance, war veterans sometimes cannot view fireworks as it induces fear in them due to the sound of the explosions seeming like gun shots. In Slaughterhouse-Five, author Kurt Vonnegut, a former soldier in World War II, explores the concept of post-traumatic stress disorder by identifying the underlying causes, highlighting the impacts and symptoms of PTSD, and evaluating coping mechanisms.

Themes in various amounts of stories can range from love to death. While themes portray the central idea of the story; they figure out the theme of the story you can discover many secrets the author describes throughout the story. In Slaughterhouse Five, the main character as described as “stuck in time” which would make you wonder why. Certainly Vonnegut distributes a variety of literary elements to capture the central theme of the story using setting, conflict, and symbolism to show that time is the theme.

Through the exploration of Billy Pilgrim’s detached and indifferent thoughts, Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five illustrates the coping mechanisms of a World War II veteran with post traumatic stress disorder.

Kurt Vonnegut’s striking style left a undeniable mark on mid twentieth century literature. By blending science fiction tropes with impactful social commentary and unorthodox humor he was able to use his particular voice to speak on a wide variety of real topics. Few of his novels have more to say than 1963’s Cat’s Cradle, ostensibly a story about a fantastical invention and its horrifying consequences. Underneath that decidedly pulpy sheen lies a book about religion, truth, purpose, and nuclear war. To unearth these deeper meanings Cat’s Cradle must be examined through the Cold War paranoia, rejection of spirituality, and tenuous grasp on reality that defined its era of postmodernism.

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.

In order to interpret Vonnegut’s intentions and purpose of social criticism throughout Slaughterhouse Five, specially in chapter nine, it´s necessary to understand science fiction and its elements. For

How did Kurt Vonnegut use postmodern approaches to create an antiwar antinovel in Slaughterhouse 5?