WEEK FIFTEEN: Slaughterhouse-Five (6)

 A story about war, time travel and aliens? Everything is possible in Kurt Vonnegut’s works. The non-linear storytelling in a form of time travelling or most likely flashbacks adds chaos to the story as the reader does not know where and when they will be thrown on the next page. The way the protagonist Billy Pilgrim thinks and perceives the world around him illustrates the effects of war trauma on an individual. It is hard to write or read about war but Vonnegut had a different approach to this destruction. The protagonist refers to death the same way as the aliens with a phrase “so it goes”, without any emotions as they know time is relevant and they always live in different periods of time, and they always die as Billy Pilgrim always dies on February 13 in 1976. We are going through his memories, we are living with him all the moments of his life in no particular order but only Billy has to suffer over and over again. Having friends that just came from war now it makes me understand better why Vonnegut chose this approach to the story. War is not just awful memories or a wound that will heal one day. It is something you live with every day, it never goes away and changes the person by 180 degrees. 

What is interesting about this novel is that it is an anti war novel but it does not end the war. He acknowledges the fact that it keeps happening in the novel as it keeps happening in the world no matter how “civilized” and advanced we became over the centuries. Vonnegut touches this very serious theme in a way that it sometimes feels even funny. 

Billy Pilgrim also has family and wife which are less important part of the story and personally I was rushing through the pages about Valencia to get to “more important” events. 

Although it was hard to get another Kurt Vonnegut novel after the Cat’s Cradle but Slaughterhouse 5 was a unique read and it will definitely be worth rereading in the future.


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