Reviews From Our Customers
Didn't affect me the way it obviously does some people
Billy Pilgrim is a man who witnessed the firebombing of Dresden during World War II where he was a POW. Later in life he believes he was abducted by aliens and taken to the planet Tralfamadore. Sometime after this he became unstuck in time, constantly shifting from one time period of his life to another. One minute he is in the POW camp, and the next he is on Tralfamadore and the next at home with his wife. Slaughterhouse Five is filled with absurd images and people and speaks to how we handle traumatizing events in our lives. It is an oddly structured book in that there is no real beginning, middle or end and constantly jumps around in time and place. It is worthwhile to read this book for its absurd humor and deft characterization of Billy Pilgrim, but it does not strike me as the iconic classic it is made out to be.
Unhinged
The horrors of war have unhinged many a man, Vonegut's Billy Pilgrim being one of the more famous of them. It takes no great insight to grasp that war is awful almost beyond human understanding and that participating in it, or merely witnessing it, can crack someone's sanity. Billy Pilgrim can't stop reliving his trauma. His time-tripping is an unconcious attempt to escape that trauma. Goofy looking aliens tell him to think of the positve things in his life. It never works. He goes tripping back to Dresden at random times in his life, and trips back to his life at random times while he's in Dresden. I don't understand why this novel ever rose to the status of a classic. There are much better anti-war books ( Johnny Got His Gun ); there are much better science fiction books ( too numerous to mention ); there are much better anti-war science fiction books ( The Forever War, The Stars My Destination ). The only pluses I can give this book are Vonnegut's style ( crisp, succinct and in plain English ) and its relative brevity. Get it from the library ( don't waste your cash ) and read it just so you can argue intelligently when someone tells you how great a book it is.
A Mind-bending Romp of a book! A Unique Classic!
"Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time." That's how the second chapter, which really is the first chapter, of Slaughter-house Five begins. It's simplistic and beautiful. That is one reason why Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. is my favorite author.
This sentence alone can barely prepare you for the trip that lies ahead. The novel is about Billy Pilgrim, of course, and his realization that time has no meaning. He shifts from being a semi-retired optometrist after his only daughter is grown and his wife has died, to a young, lost, and hopeless infantry man in WWII, and then best of all, a captive of the Tralfamadorians on their planet Tralfamadore in a zoo with B-movie actress Montana Wildhack. Vonnegut skips back and forth, as does our main character Bill--Billy just deals with it, not knowing when he'll be where, and often showing up in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The novel is a brilliant anti-war novel. People have tried to classify it as a war novel, since part of it is set during WWII during the fire-bombing of Dresden. And others have tried to say it was science fiction, since the main character does travel back and forth in time and spends time putting on sex shows for an alien race in a zoo. But the novel is almost undefinable as for as genres go, as is most of Vonnegut's novels.
The novel says to me: "What does this all matter anyway? Time is not important. So why waste time on war when it will all end in time?" In fact, Pilgrim says that the Tralfamadorians do not even mourn death because they realize that time is but a long stream of events, and that if one moment in time is bad, then there are thousands upon thousands of other moments that aren't so bad. Why not spend time in the moments of time that are dear to us, or are worth reliving instead of dwelling on the bad times? Instead of spending a day at a funeral, wouldn't you rather be at the awesome baseball game your dad took you to when you were 11? Of course you would.
Slaughter-house Five is also extremely funny, just like any of Vonnegut's works. Often Vonnegut infuses us in odd situations that I can't help but laugh aloud at. An example is when one moment Billy is making love to Montana Wildhack in their glass dome cage on Tralfamadore and then he is thrust dreamily into the snowy Dresden countryside with an inane understanding of the brutality that surrounds him. Wonderful stuff. Other times, Vonnegut's dry wit prevails, and you find yourself rereading a sentence or two just to make sure that he wrote what you thought he wrote.
Some people may find Vonnegut's style a little confusing or at worst deranged. But I say give the novel a chance. If this one is too much for you, start with Cat's Cradle, and then move on to Slaughter-house Five. But definitely read both. Another, more recent novel I highly recommend is The Losers' Club: Complete Restored Edition by Richard Perez - a very engaging, funny book.
