Book Review (Rucksack): Slaughterhouse-Five

Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children’s Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death

Written by Kurt Vonnegut in 1969

The Raccoon: Kurt Vonnegut’s absurdist anti-war book relays the horrors of the Second World War, specifically the bombing of Dresden, through the experiences of Billy Pilgrim, a traumatized soldier and chronic time-traveler.

UNMASKED: Vonnegut, who appears in his own work to provide a frame narrative that discusses how difficult the novel was to write, admits near its end that “There are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces.  One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters.”  While this is a profound sentiment, and the author hammers in the lesson quite well, it makes for a slow and unrelatable story.

The structure of Slaughterhouse-Five reflects Billy’s emotional state: unstable.  The plot jumps around in time, and the only unifying factor of the disjointed scenes is the main character’s abduction by four-dimensional aliens, who convince him that time is irrelevant, à la Arrival or Interstellar.  The reader is led to believe that this sci-fi element is a symptom of Billy’s PTSD; however, its absurdity detracts from the story’s serious message.

By the end of the novel, Vonnegut has delivered his picture of war as hopeless and absurd, but this theme is the only thread that holds a messy book together.

Strengths:

• Slaughterhouse-Five is chock-full of memorable images, and a few of its humorous scenes make for lasting jokes and references.
• The narrator is irreverent towards death and tragedy, expertly echoing Vonnegut’s lesson through a uniquely painful lens.

Weaknesses:

• Billy’s experience living in an alien zoo adds absolutely nothing to the story, and the Tralfamadorians as a whole are annoying to the reader.

Rating: 11/20 prisoners

Ideal Setting: Read this when you begin to worry that your life is out of your control.  It is.