Introductory+Analysis





**//Slaughterhouse-Five//, by Kurt Vonnegut**
Reviewed by Brent Byars

//Slaughterhouse-Five// is part memoir, part war novel. Many have called it the most important war novel to come out of World War II. It is Kurt Vonnegut's attempt to portray a very difficult event, the firebombing and complete destruction of Dresden. Through his alter ego, who travels through time and space, Vonnegut acknowledges the impossiblity of accurately portraying such an event, and instead focuses on the emotions and thoughts that it raised within him. In the process, he revolutionizes both what we think of as a novel and what we think of war.
 * Summary**



//Analysis (pointing to different views of method and form, and suggesting further study)//

Kurt Vonnegut is one of the greatest science fiction writers of his generation. But don’t call him that. Vonnegut avoids that categorization like he avoids the plague.He contends that it only makes it easier for critics to dismiss his work as entertaining but meaningless or to apply rigid standards of analysis that his ideas simply won’t support. Of course his work deals with parallel dimensions, distant planets, and time travel. But it they aren’t simply flights of fancy. Vonnegut struggles with the central issues of humanity (death and war, love and war, living with war…) in a humane and emotional way. That’s what makes him different from Gene Roddenberry or L. Ron Hubbard (Wood 133).

//Slaughterhouse-Five//, in fact, is more a serious war novel than a piece of sci-fi fluff. In it, Vonnegut grapples with his own (failed, he makes it clear) attempts to tell the true story behind the bombing of Dresden. It is therefore both a war novel and an anti-war novel, as he comes to terms with the inevitable failure of any writer to capture an experience so atrocious. Vonnegut believes that the bomb dropped over Dresden froze the moment in time, and in the telling of that moment all meaning is lost.



Time, incidentally, plays an important role in //Slaughterhouse-Five//. Its protagonist, Vonnegut’s alter-ego Billy Pilgrim, makes his own unheroic pilgrimage through time. At certain intervals, he becomes "unstuck" in time. He travels back and forth randomly through his own life and cavorts with the Tralfamadorians, his new traveling companions. Tralfamadore is a distant planet whose occupants hold much different ideas about time, life, and death than Earthlings. When Vonnegut juxtaposes realistic events and fictional space traveling aliens, though, it isn’t simple digression. Vonnegut uses the Tralfamadorian view of life to point out certain things in our own notions of it. When a Tralfamadorian sees a dead being, and says "So it goes," it makes us question our own ideas about life and death. In that respect, Vonnegut’s work questions our own preconceived notions of war and death more closely than a closely realistic book like //[|Red Badge of Courage]//, which incidentally is mentioned in //Slaughterhouse-Five//.

The form and narrative structure of //Slaughterhouse-Five// is as important in developing its themes as the novel’s substance. The writer is acutely aware of his own limitations and motivations writing the novel, as indicated by the first words of the novel. Vonnegut, in writing the story of a firebombed Dresden, is trying to convey both what happened and what //really// happened. Clearly this author does not believe in a formulaic approach to plot (beginning, middle, end). He rejects this idea and many other standards of storytelling to create a new form of the novel, which fits his themes and unique humanistic perspective perfectly.



In writing //Slaughterhouse-Five//, Vonnegut is more creating an anti-war anti-novel than an anti-war war novel (Meeter 216). His perspective is uniquely postmodern, and his narrative emphasizes the disjointed state of human affairs. His story is not without hope, though, just as the human plight is not completely in despair. Vonnegut uses the Tralfamadorians to underscore elements of our own culture and way of thinking. Their feelings are contrasted with those of our collective consciousness, and used to find hope and reconciliation in a lost world.



Bibliography


 * Hicks, Granville**. "Slaughterhouse-Five." //Literary Horizons//. Ed. Granville Hicks. New York: New York UP, 1970. 179-183.

For a look at how the novel was reviewed when it was published. "The best [Vonnegut] has written."

Meeter, Glenn. "Vonnegut’s Formal and Moral Outerworldliness: //Cat’s Cradle// and //Slaughterhouse-Five//." Klinkowitz 204-220.
 * Klinkowitz, Jerome and John Somer eds**. //The Vonnegut Statement//. Delacorte Press, 1973.

For a look at how the author "mingles fantasy and reality." Also compares //Slaughterhouse-Five//’s use of science fiction to that of //Cat’s Cradle//.


 * Wood, Karen and Charles Wood**. "The Vonnegut Effect: Science Fiction and Beyond." Klinkowitz 133-157.

How Vonnegut has changed the form of the science fiction novel.


 * Merrill, Robert ed**. //Critical Essays on Kurt Vonnegut//. Boston: G. K. Hall & Co., 1990.


 * Harris, Charles B**. "Illusion and Absurdity: The Novels of Kurt Vonnegut." Merrill 131-141.

Believes that Vonnegut uses "illusion and absurdity…to engage in social protest."


 * Merrill, Robert and Peter A. Scholl**. "Vonnegut’s //Slaughterhouse-Five//: The Requirements for Chaos." Merrill 142-152.

Disagrees partly with Harris, believes that Vonnegut’s outlook is much more optimistic.


 * Klinkowitz, Jerome.** Slaughterhouse-Five: //Reforming the Novel and the World//. Boston: Twayne, 1990.

How the novel has changed the form of the novel, and used the new form to communicate the reality of "one unspeakable event." See especially chapter six, "The Reinvention of Form."


 * Giannone, Richard**. //Vonnegut: A Preface to His Novels//. Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat, 1977. 82-97.

Believes that a "change of heart in directly confronting his subject [war] brings about a change in the form of his fiction." See chapter six, //"Slaughterhouse-Five//."