Slaughterhouse-Five: A Novel by Kurt Vonnegut
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Book Reviews of Slaughterhouse-Five: A Novel
Book Review: Like Beethoven's Fifth Piano Concerto.
Summary: 5 Stars
A work of perfection. Kurt Vonnegut said all there was needed to say in this harsh indictment of war of and humanity's failure to prevent it.
The main character, Billy Pilgrim, was written in a masterful way. A man who could find pleasure in the simplest of things, is thrust into a situation that would break almost anyone, let alone a simple man like Pilgrim.
Like all great works of literature, they are open to speculation by the reader, and I found enough in this book's 215 pages that I could sit here speculating on it for ages. This, to me, is the true mark of a great book. One that will be read forever and will never die.
My take on the whole alien abduction and time travel was Billy Pilgrim's mind dealing with the chaos of his life. The way a psychiatrist will explain that a person's mind can splinter in situations of dire stress and create other personalities, so in this manner did Pilgrim's mind allow him to believe that he was able to time travel and be kidnapped by aliens. Or, you can believe that it actually happened. God only knows what Vonnegut's intentions were.
The war depictions are sad and funny, heartfelt and well-told. You can take away all of the underlying meanings in this book and appreciate it as just a great piece of fiction, a great story.
If you are a person who looks around at the state of humanity and says, "Why don't people understand how to treat each other? They just don't get it." Then you should start reading Vonnegut right now, and Slaughterhouse-Five is a magnificent place to start.
A timeless classic.
Book Review: Vonnegut's Anti-War Masterpiece
Summary: 5 Stars
Slaughterhouse-Five is perhaps one of the most recognizable anti-war novels. I had blushingly never read this one before. It's one of Megan's favorite books, and she's tried to get me to read it for years. And now I have, and I'm so glad that I have.
Slaughterhouse-Five is Kurt Vonnegut's satirical tale of Billy Pilgrim, a World War II veteran who is "unstuck in time." What this means is that Pilgrim often disconnects from the present and picks up again at some other time in his life and usually at a different location. Pilgrim was in Dresden during the bombings, he was in Nazi concentration camps, he was at home with his wife, visiting with his recently married daughter, visiting with his son who was a green beret, being abducted by aliens and taken to the planet, Tralfamador, where he is put on display at a zoo.
I found this book to be quite powerful. It's a touching story at times, very light-hearted and almost humorous at times, and at other times just disturbing. It's a story that will always remain relevant in these days of war. It shows how powerful of a thing war is and the traumatic toll that it can have on the life of a soldier.
Vonnegut's writing style is amazing. I found myself asking "what makes a book a classic?" This book is the perfect example of a classic. It's a writing style that's totally in a league of it's own. The book flows so easily, yet there's so many complex connections made in it. Little tiny lines that stand out at first come back in a major way later in the book tying into the main plot. Vonnegut was a master of the American novel.
Book Review: High-water mark of POMO
Summary: 5 Stars
While living in the Haifa University dorms I developed the habit of checking a dozen books out of the library at a time and one of them was "Slaughterhouse five." Before reading "slaughterhouse five" I'd have laughed myself stupid if someone suggested I read ANY book cover to cover in one day but, yes...Vonnegut is that good.
I always read the blurbs before reading the introduction. The blurbs for "Slughterhouse five" were so well executed that I figured the book must be "that good."
Vonnegut starts with an introduction that reads like a post card to a friend and before you know it, the narrative kicks in and Vonnegut introduces timeless and structureless events that make sense in their timeless and structureless state but, when juxtaposed, give the story its substance, its kick, its juice. There are no loose ends and no soggy and simple-minded moral to the story other than the one you manage to extrapolate. no unnecessary passages, characters, dialogue or even unnecesary words. An airtight novel if there ever was one.
A treat for anyone with a penchant for the more twisted traits exclusive to the human species. The images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that most people are familiar with can't even compare to the images of the fire bombed Dresden Vonnegut conjures up in my mind. Raw and dead serious matter treated with a levity that draws chuckles in situations that would otherwise draw tears of blood. For all who had their praise for Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. immortalized in blurb form we salute you.
Book Review: A highly creative and simultaneously amusing and thought-provoking novel that hammers home its themes; "A-"
Summary: 5 Stars
I had extremely high expectations for 'Slaughterhouse Five' and Vonnegut expertly delivered for the most part. I loved his creativity for starters: shifting in time was pure genius; it juxtaposed events in a way that showed the significance of events (or meaninglessness, depending on the circumstance) in a way a traditional plotline could not.
I also really liked how Vonnegut largely delayed the experiences of Dresden until the latter half of the book. This gave a true sense of foreboding to the proceedings and has the effect of giving the event even greater significance.
I thought the author's use of apathy, unintentional hilarity, and just plain ridiculousness (all for making a point) were expertly executed. I had to continually remind myself that while we almost expect these qualities nowadays in modern storytelling, these same qualities were much more rare at the time of Vonnegut's writing, and in that respect he was far ahead of his time.
That said, I did have a minor problem with the novel. I think Vonnegut just tries to be too cute sometimes. For example, the constant use of "So it goes" really starts to lose its effect and was overused to the extent that Vonnegut actually got in the way of his own storytelling I felt, hence the "minus" in "A-".
Ultimately, if you're looking for unconventional (though effective) storytelling and a novel that gets to the root of the meaninglessness/senseslessness we all feel at times - especially with regard to war - I think you'll find this to be a great book.
Book Review: Stunning Indictment of War
Summary: 5 Stars
This book shows up on high school reading lists because of its deceptively simple language and (supposed) humor, but only on rereading many years later did I realize how multi-layered and complex the story is. Billy Pilgrim is a hapless American soldier in WWII, who becomes "unstuck" in time and experiences life as one never-ending seamless moment. He moves back and forth freely in time, from his childhood to WWII to marriage to death, but since all moments exist in all other moments, there's no cause for sorrow over a death or an injury, even one's own. Thus Vonnegut can juxtapose the tragedy of war with the inane suburban life Billy subsequently leads, or Billy's life on Trafalmadore. Trafalmadore?--the fourth dimension, where Billy discovers another way to look at life. Vonnegut suggests that perhaps war happens precisely because we live in the moment--we fail to remember the past and ignore the future.
On another level, Vonnegut paints a raw and brutal picture of war--the dead and the unlikely survivors, the killing of 100,000 in a night of firebombing, Americans brutalizing other Americans, the execution of a soldier for stealing a teapot as Billy returns home with a diamond found in an old overcoat. Kilgore Trout, Billy's favorite author, a crazy science fiction writer, is the only one who tells the truth, that man creates his own downfall.
I've barely scratched the surface of this painful, absurd, hopeful novel. I read it in high school, but I didn't have a clue. Try it again for yourself.