Slaughterhouse-Five: A Duty Dance with Death

TIME magazine ranked "Slaughterhouse-Five" twelfth on its list of the 100 best novels of the 20th Century ("Gone With the Wind" was eleventh, "Lolita", thirteenth). It is an important achievement by any standard, the most significant of Kurt Vonnegut's work. If a review is in order at this point in time (thirty-six years after its publication) it ought not deal with its merit, that's a given, but should address some aspect of the work that makes it relevant today. At a time when our country is war-logged, tired to death of the war in Afghanistan, "Slaughterhouse-Five" reminds us of all that is wrong with depending on the military to sort out the world's problems.Billy Pilgrim, the hapless World War II Chaplin's Assistant whose experiences toward the end of the war are at the center of Vonnegut's tale, could not have been less suited for active duty. Separated from his unit virtually from the time he reached the front at the Battle of the Bulge, he never got his bearings and soon came to grief. Hurting, in way over his head, Pilgrim wanted to be left to die, but couldn't manage even that. Roland Weary, a buddy, refused to leave him behind, and bullied him along. When captured, Weary and Pilgrim were in such sad shape that their captors published photographs of them "as heartening evidence of how miserably equipped the American Army often was." Vonnegut, whose actual World War II service provided much of the raw material for the book, never lets the reader forget the reasons for his antiwar views.These become most clear in the account of the aftermath of the bombing raid on Dresden, the centerpiece of the book. In gross violation of the rules of war, the raid was designed to immolate Dresden's civilian population in the course of burning the city to the ground. Winston Churchill is said to have approved the raid because he wanted to deal with Stalin at the upcoming Yalta Conference from a position of strength. The fact that adverse weather conditions delayed the planned attack until after Yalta did not persuade Churchill to back off. The great old city of Dresden, a place of no military value, one which the Red Cross considered an open city, i.e. one that would not be bombed, was wiped out.Billy Pilgrim was part of a small group of American prisoners who were housed (as Vonnegut had been) in a deep underground meat locker, Slaughterhouse-Five, away from the city center. It is where Pilgrim (and Vonnegut) spent the night of the bombing. "There were sounds like giant footsteps above. . . . There was a fire-storm out there. Dresden was one big flame. The one flame ate everything organic, everything that would burn. . . . When the Americans and their guards did come out [the next day], the sky was black with smoke. The sun was an angry little pinhead. Dresden was like the moon now, nothing but minerals. The stones were hot. Everybody else in the neighborhood was dead. So it goes."For practical purposes, this gut-wrenching account was for a great many Americans their first accurate look at what had happened to Dresden at the hands of our Eighth Air Force. "Slaughterhouse-Five" not only revealed the extent of the atrocity, it makes clear Vonnegut's contempt for our government's efforts to conceal it from us. As Vonnegut writes "Even then [back in the days fairly soon after the War] I was supposedly writing a book about Dresden. It wasn't a famous air raid back then in America. Not many Americans knew how much worse it had been than Hiroshima, for instance. I didn't know that either. There hadn't been that much publicity." See the End Note.Vonnegut uses the phrase "so it goes" to emphasize the finality of death. It appears at least 84 times in the book including the one quoted above. The editors of the 2009 Dial Press trade paper edition missed a great chance to use it to good purpose in the brief biographical note on the book's back cover. It ends: "Mr. Vonnegut passed away in April 2007." If Vonnegut had been alive to compose that note, he would have added "so it goes."End Note. Midway through Chapter 9 of "Slaughterhouse-Five" the narrator, alter ego for the author, states "the thing was, though, there was almost nothing in the 27 volumes [of the "Official History of the Army Air Force in World War Two"] about the Dresden raid, even though it was a howling success." So true. The account of operations for the night of February13-14 simply says "461 B17s are dispatched to hit the marshaling yard at Dresden (311)." The number in parenthesis apparently refers to the number of targets destroyed in the marshaling yard-- a place where"railway [cars] are shunted and made up into trains and where engines, carriages, etc. are kept when not in use." Contrast that with the account of operations in the Pacific on August 6, 1945: "The world's first atomic attack takes place. . . . At 0915 hours (0815 hours Japan time) the atomic bomb is released over Hiroshima from 31,600 feet (9,632 meters), it explodes 50 seconds later. 80+% of the city's buildings are destroyed and over 71,000 people (Japanese figures say from 70,000 to 80,000) are killed."

Hmmmm...This was assigned reading for my daughter in 9th grade English and I had to use other resources to educate her about the setting and era of this book. War, post war, current events of the time, reality of the writers experience somehow morphs into highly imaginative and strange situations and storylines that escapes science fiction ideas for the era...After learning that background context and looking up words, places, people and historical events, she had a better understanding but the writers random style and tangent storylines were bothersome to her. She is an avid reader but this style was confusing and not structured enough for her to enjoy. She read it 3 times thoroughly using Spark notes, Wikipedia, dictionaries and other online resources to help her feel adequate to write her required essay. I read it as well and I found parts entertaining whilst some not so much. It may be a better read for adults than for 14 year olds. She and I do appreciate the additional knowledge and understanding we gained through using the other resources so overall the experience of getting through this was beneficial and worthwhile. It was a good father-daughter activity. She said it reminded her of her grandfather talking about topics that led to telling stories that were somehow related but then after tangent upon tangent and mentioning people she never heard of, except when he mentioned it a few minutes prior, he somehow returned to the original topic and was on to the next topic while her head was still spinning, ha ha ha. I think the writer admits to that style of randomness so there is no fault. Be open minded from the start, disregard the horror of the title, don't think of it as a holocaust novel (it's not), allow it to be smart, silly, funny and weird and an enjoyable adventure.

I recently purchased this book and read it for the second (or third?) time, having last read it over 15 years ago. I remembered it being good, though not my favorite Vonnegut novel. (Mother Night is probably still my favorite simply because I find that I think of it often, because the moral of the story remains poignant and because the complexities of the story remain interesting and provocative.) I was curious to re-read it because I was reminded that this was one of Vonnegut's favorites of his own novels. (He rated it an A-plus along with Cat's Cradle. Interestingly, he rated Slipstick a D, and I found Slapstick to be a wonderful book - also one that I reflect on often. But then again, I actually love *all* Vonnegut writing because even his worst is better than most everything else.)This most recent reading upgraded my opinion from good to great. Still, I favor other Vonnegut novels. As I wrote, Mother Night may be one of my favorites, and I also love Bluebeard. But Slaughterhouse Five is certainly worthy of the praise it receives. It showcases the genius of Vonnegut - moralistic yet nihilistic, pointless yet poignant, heartbreaking, uproarious, and deeply human while at the same time bizarre and alien. I loved every minute of it - every sentence. Vonnegut certainly sticks to his own rules of writing. Not a sentence is wasted. No fluff. Nothing flowery or uninteresting. Nothing overly complex. He keeps it simple and yet in so doing causes the reader to question and wonder and look more deeply into his or her own heart.One thing that is rather obnoxious, however, is that the Kindle version (which I purchased) is rife with errors. I noticed formatting and capitalization errors throughout. The errors are not enough to make it unreadable, but it is obnoxious to be charged $5.99 for a Kindle version in which it is evident that basic proofreading was not applied. That seems unprofessional and rude. If I was being charged $0.99 I wouldn't even make mention of it. But $5.99? I expect reasonable efforts to be made to produce a professional quality product. Why I am bothering to write this critique, I don't know, because with 1720 reviews as of this writing, I can't imagine that RossettaBooks, the publisher of the Kindle version, can be bothered to read this one. But in the nearly infinitesimal chance that someone from the publisher does read this, *please* proofread these books before publishing them.

It was an awesome book, I enjoyed it a lot.

Nobody writes like Vonnegut or Henry Miller anymore. Deeply satisfying read and perfect description of the warped human mind.

I hadn't read SL5 for 40 years, originally as an undergrad. It is as good or better than I remembered it, with the short, vignette-like episodes that make it almost impossible to put down (much like Cat's Cradle, Vonnegut's other great novel). There is a plain-spoken, everyday humour that somehow makes a book about something as heart-rending as the massacre of an entire city remarkably humane and even funny. Structurally, the book takes the events of one man's life and shuffles them like a deck of playing cards; it is tribute to KV's genius that the result is brilliantly coherent and logical, and easy to follow. It stands as the best and most empathic novel about trauma I have ever read, and KV was well ahead of his time in crafting the interplay between trauma, dissociation, re-experiencing and emotional distancing the are now recognized as part of PTSD. Vonnegut is one of the great American novelists of the 20th century; it is important that his work is not lost in the passage of time. I highly recommend SL5.

Binding is not upto the mark. Pages are comingout as I read.

Me gusta mucho esta autor. Recomendado 100%. Buena edición.