Slaughter House Five [Mass Market Paperback]

Taught now in English classes as a post-modern sketch of the absurdity of war, this novel uses a collage of techniques and genres--science fiction, episodic storytelling, Absurdism, memoir--to get its point across.

It's point can still be missed, however. War is fought by children, Vonnegut explains, caught up in something that they often do not understand. Therein lay the absurdity. Vonnegut's own personal history, captured and held in Dresden during the bombing, allowed him firsthand to witness the devastation war can bring. Ideologies are transient, he realizes. And the destruction of one of the most beautiful European cities and the deaths of 24,000 human beings had a profound effect on him. What is the point? Examine the purpose of life. What is it?

The story demands the reader to ask questions of him/herself.

Also, the impact this book has had on literature can't be ignored. In an earlier review, the stylistic similarities to Adams and Irving, both who followed Vonnegut and so were obviously influenced, was mentioned. That's important. You can trace a number of modern satirists to Vonnegut--Palahniuk being my own personal favorite.

Whether you agree with Vonnegut's stance on war as absurd or not, Slaughterhouse-Five is worth a careful reading.

Slaughterhouse 5 is every bit as good as it's reputation suggests. It is witty, observant, humane, and clever. Vonnegut writes in a deceptively simple prose, but which must have been difficult to have pulled off: namely, the way the story flits from the present to the past and to the future, very often in a single page, but manages to do it without disturbing the effortless flow of the narrative. No mean trick for a writer. A favourite book of mine. I can also recommend some of his earlier books: The Sirens of Titan; Piano Player; Mother Night, and Player Piano. His later books are not so hot; but Slaughterhouse 5 is his masterpiece. Like Heller's Catch 22, with which it has something in common, it is fun to read.

I have now read this novel, Slaughterhouse 5, by Kurt Vonnegut, twice over a two-month period. My second reading was for the purpose of a book club and I felt that it would give me an opportunity to ascertain what I had missed on my first reading. I am afraid to say that my second reading did not make my experience of the book any more enjoyable than the first reading nor did I feel that I had gained anything that I might have missed from my first reading. Yet I have to admit that my lack of appreciation of this novel places me in a minority because over the years it has gained cult status and is ranked number 18 in Modern Library list of 100 best novels in English. So here are my reasons as to why I think Slaughterhouse 5 is a much overrated novel.

Slaughterhouse 5 purports to be an anti war novel with Vonnegut putting across his message in an indirect manner. Chapter one of the book is effectively a preface in which, autobiographical fashion, Vonnegut sets the scene for the novel to follow. He launches the novel proper by telling us at the end of chapter one that he has: "finished his war book now. The next one I write is going to be fun." This is a hint at part of the novel's method that is its use of irony because obviously war is not fun. I also suspect that this is one of the reasons why the book is much praised - it is a satire and we all love a good laugh even against the backdrop of war and its brutality.

Chapter two introduces the main character of the novel, Billy Pilgrim. The story of Billy relates to his experience in the Second World War whilst held as a prisoner of war in Dresden where he experiences the bombing of the city. Along with this realistic aspect of the story Vonnegut also creates a science fiction narrative where Billy tells us in a radio broadcast that he was kidnapped by a flying saucer in 1967 and taken to a planet called Tralfamadore. The sci-fi aspect of the novel is another reason why I did not like it. It reads like a children's fantasy story.

Vonnegut does a number of interesting things with Billy. He has him drifting back and forth in time. A process Vonnegut calls being "unstuck in time". Bill even ends up in two places at the same time. This process allows Billy to narrate this past life and his current predicament in Dresden. All this is supposed to be delivered in a witty fashion but I found Vonnegut's wit childish. For example, the creatures on Tralfamadore, "can see where each star has been and where it is going, so that the heavens are filled with rarefied, luminous spaghetti." Further, part of Vonnegut's style is to deliver his narrative in short simple sentences in a reportage fashion. I found this monotonous and dull.

It could be argued that the novel works on an allegorical level, where there is an underlying story about how humans treat each other and other creatures. For example, Billy is placed in a zoo in Tralfamadore and he is subsequently given a female "mate", Montana Wildhack, so that Tralfamadorians could see them mate. Also Vonnegut has one of his minor characters Howard W Campbell Jr set out a case in a monograph to show how we treat each other in unfair and unequal ways.

The novel is also about the writing and creative process. In setting out to write the novel Vonnegut tells us that: "As a trafficker in climaxes and thrills and characterization and wonderful dialogue and suspense and confrontation, I had outlined the Dresden story many times. The best outline I ever made, or anyway the prettiest one was on the back of a roll of wallpaper." Vonnegut then has a way of merging his ramblings about the creative process into an autobiographical narrative. So effectively he blurs the line between fiction and biography. This was clever.

The small parts of gems in this novel do not add up to a whole glittering diamond. I struggled to get to the end of this short novel on both readings and as I did so I could hear, a key feature of the novel, the tedious refrains: "So it goes" and "And so on" ringing in my ears. The novel is meant to deliver a powerful message but the means detracts from the message.