Slaughterhouse Five Essay Examples

This first chapter, a preface, is insistent on the fact that the book is based on real events. Vonnegut, like our narrator, is a veteran of World War II, a former prisoner of war, and a witness to a great massacre, and that fact lends a certain authority to what follows. Vonnegut shares with us…

Slaughterhouse-FiveCritics often suggest that Kurt Vonnegut’s novels represent a man’s desperate, yet, futile search for meaning in a senseless existence. Vonnegut’s novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, displays this theme. Kurt Vonnegut uses a narrator, which is different from the main character. He uses this technique for several reasons. Kurt Vonnegut introduces Slaughterhouse Five in the first person. In…

The destruction of Dresden was not “moral,” nor is any destruction, really. We as mere mortals do not have the right to judge what is moral or not, however. That jurisdiction is left to the powers that be. But, we can still make haphazard guesses as to what strikes us as moral and immoral. Killing…

Slaughterhouse FiveBilly Pilgrim is born in 1922 and grows up in Ilium, New York. A funny-looking, weak youth, he does well in high school, then he enrolls in night classes at the Ilium School of Optometry, and is soon drafted into the army. He serves as a chaplain’s assistant, is sent into the Battle of…