Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five is a capturing novel about the life of Billy Pilgrim. Billy, like Kurt Vonnegut, was a prisoner in World War II and survives the largest massacre in European history: the bombing of Dresden. Some of Vonnegut’s story is fictional but the majority is based on real events and real people. World War II was an incredibly violent war and Vonnegut does an amazing job capturing some of the truths of this war and exposing them to the world. The Tralfamadorians, especially, enforce the brutality of the Dresden bombing and World War II. The Tralfamadorians are aliens who allegedly abduct Billy and make him see life differently. These aliens can see in the fourth dimension which allows them to see all moments in one’s life at the same time, making death much less important. This is a way for the reader and the soldiers to escape from brutal reality. Slaughterhouse-Five is considered by many to be Kurt Vonnegut’s best pieces and it is easy to see why. The novel captures the reader with its unique structure, honesty, and nonchalant violence. The bombing of Dresden was a horrible event considered to be worse even than Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Vonnegut is able to convey this violence in an excellent, educational way.
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