Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
Marek Vit
"Be kind. Don't hurt. Death is coming for all of us anyway,
and it is better to be Lot's wife looking back through salty
eyes than the Deity that destroyed those cities of the plain
in order to save them."
- Robert Scholes
Introduction
Slaughterhouse-Five; or The Children's Crusade, A Duty
Dance With Death is surely the best achievement of Kurt Vonnegut
and even one of the most acclaimed works in modern American
literature. It is a very personal novel which draws upon
Vonnegut's own experience in World War Two. He was an advance
scout with the 106th Infantry Division, a prisoner of war and
a witness to the fire-bombing of Dresden on 13th February 1945.
135,000 people died in the ruins of Dresden, which means that it
was the greatest man-caused massacre of all times (71,379 people
were killed by the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima.)
Vonnegut manages to tell the reader many things and it is
hard to decide, what exactly is the main theme. It is a novel
about war, about the cruelty and violence done in war, about
people and their nature, their selfishness, about love, humanity,
regeneration, motion, and death.
I will try to explore the novel in a greater depth and try
to say which of the themes mentioned characterizes the book to
the greatest extent.
wise. They mostly have a very poor plot (or none at all) and the
emphasis is put onto the rather comic and pathetic characters.
Kurt Vonnegut also very often uses science fiction and comic book
formulas (quick action, short dialogues etc.), which usually puts
his books onto bookstore shelves marked "sci-fi". Vonnegut,
however, doesn't take the sci-fi elements with the sam
e seriousness as the other sci-fi writers, and that probably
makes the difference between his works and science fiction.
In Slaughterhouse-Five, many characters from his previous
books show up (Mr. Rosewater, Kilgore Trout, the Tralfamadorians
etc.) The reader can also recognize some themes that appeared in
Vonnegut's earlier books (War vs. Love; Life vs. human
understanding etc). Some critiques described Slaughterhouse-Five
as a summary of his previous five novels.
Structure of Slaughterhouse-Five
The book has two narratives. One is personal and the other
is impersonal. The latter is the story of Billy Pilgrim who,
similarly to the author, fights in World War Two, is taken
prisoner by the Germans and witnesses the fire-storming of
Dresden. The personal narrative is Vonnegut's own story about
writing a book about the worst experience of his life. It appears
mostly in the first chapter, and describes his temptation to
write a book about Dresden and his efforts to finally produce it.
The p ersonal view also appears in the tenth (and last) chapter
and surfaces twice in the Billy Pilgrim's story ("That was I.
That was me. That was the author of this book." - Vonnegut 1969
p.125, 148). This can assure the reader of particular identity of
the author with Billy.
Billy Pilgrim has a unique ability to become "unstuck in
time", which means that he can uncontrollably drift from one part
of his life to another "and the trips aren't necessarily fun,"
(ibid p.23). The whole book is organized in the same way Billy
moves in time. It consists of numerous sections and paragraphs
strung together in no chronological order, seemingly at random.
The whole narration is written in the past tense, so that the
reader cannot identify where the author's starting point is. This
aspect of the book is identical with the Tralfamadorian type of
books:
'There isn't any particular relationship between
all the messages, except that the author has chosen them
carefully, so that, when seen all at once, they produce
an image of life that is beautiful and surprising and
deep. There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no
References:
Brifonski and Mendelson (Editors); Contemporary Literary Criticism vol.8
Detroit: 1978; Gale Research Co
Riley, Carolyn (Editor); Contemporary Literary Criticism vol.1
Detroit: 1973; Gale Research Co
Riley, Carolyn and Barbara Harte (Editors); Contemporary Literary Criticism vol.2
Detroit: 1974; Gale Research Co
Vonnegut, Kurt Jr.; Slaughterhouse-Five; or Children's Crusade, A Duty Dance with
Death
New York: 1971; Dell Publishing
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/slaughter/section1.html
http://www.vonnegutweb.com/sh5/index.html
http://www.bookrags.com/notes/sl5/
http://www3.iath.virginia.edu/holocaust/spiegelman.html
http://www.geocities.com/athens/Atlantis/2671/#articles
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maus_(comics)
http://www.wamu.org/programs/dr/readers_review/