Book Review: Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut

By Joni:

Kurt Vonnegut is one of my all time favorite authors and Slaughterhouse Five is in my top ten list of favorite books.

One of the most interesting things to me about this book is the incredibly diverse interpretations people can have of it. The story is about a man named Billy Pilgrim who was inept as a soldier during World War II but manages to survive being a Prisoner of War (held captive in an old slaughterhouse - "Slaughterhouse Five") and later returns home to a safe albeit dull existence.

The narrative of the story jumps from time period to time period. One moment Billy is still in Germany as a young man, the next moment he is at a luncheoon for optometrists as a middle aged man. The explanation for this scattershot narrative is that Billy has become "unstuck in time" - time traveling from moment to moment of his life.

A bizarre subplot is that, during one moment of his life, he meets and is kidnapped by aliens named Tralfamadorians who place him in a zoo-like setting on their planet and observe him.

I know. I know. It sounds bizarre but - when I read Slaughterhouse Five - I never took the whole time travel / aliens stuff literally. To me, it was more like commentary about memory and the infinite number of moments - sad, beautiful, absurd moments - that make up a lifetime.

And as for the aliens, Vonnegut described them as looking like a toilet plunger. All of Vonnegut's novels have odd subplots and it's no secret that Vonnegut was a fatalist. His personal experiences early in his life forever shattered any optimism in him. At 19, he was (like Billy Pilgrim) a POW in a German work camp. He was also witness to the tragic Allied fire-bombing of Dresden, Germany. This was one of the most controversial events of WWII. Many believe that the war was already won and that the bombing of a peaceful town with no military significance was an unnecessary slaughter. As a POW, the Germans forced Vonnegut to find and bury the corpses of the men, women, and children killed. Some estimates say between 25,000 and 30,000 civilians died in this bombing. Vonnegut struggled with depression for the rest of his life. He was also an outspoken pacifist.

Every time you read Slaughterhouse Five you find something new. It's about fatalism and pacifism and free will and the absurdity of the human experience. Vonnegut was a genius. He died this year - April 11, 2007.

So it goes.