Slaughterhouse-Five in The Vonnegut Reading Group

Mar 11, 2009 Ted Mallory rated it it was amazing

One of America's most prolific 20th century authors, Kurt Vonnegut was also a WWII POW. He and about a hundred other American soldiers were being used as forced labor in a German meat processing plant when the city they were in was bombed by the allies. For some reason, the shelter they were in under the hog confinement was spared. They were the only people to survive the Bombing of Dresden in 1945. 135,000 people were killed as a result of this air attack using conventional weapons. The atomic One of America's most prolific 20th century authors, Kurt Vonnegut was also a WWII POW. He and about a hundred other American soldiers were being used as forced labor in a German meat processing plant when the city they were in was bombed by the allies. For some reason, the shelter they were in under the hog confinement was spared. They were the only people to survive the Bombing of Dresden in 1945. 135,000 people were killed as a result of this air attack using conventional weapons. The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan only killed 71,379.

Slaughterhouse 5 was published in 1969 at the height of American involvement in Vietnam and is often considered a powerful antiwar book, along the likes of Josef Heller's "Catch 22" and Richard Hooker's "M*A*S*H."

Slaughterhouse 5 follows a character Vonnegut invented, who was one of the hundred Americans who survived Dresden along with him. "Billy Pilgrim" is a Forrest Gump sort of character. Billy is an under trained, unarmed chaplain's assistant sent over during the Battle of the Bulge, caught behind German lines, first sent to a concentration camp in a prisoner train, then to the meat processing plant in Dresden. That would be enough to give anyone Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), but twenty years later he is the only person to survive a plane crash on his way to an optometry convention. Billy sustains a major head injury in the crash. Somewhere between WWII and the sixties suburbs Billy believes he is abducted by aliens and "un-stuck" from time.

As a result, the book follows Billy Pilgrim as he jumps from memory to memory in the war, the prison camp, and various other misadventures back home. You can imagine homeless Vietnam vets suffering from PTSD and having LSD flashbacks, but Billy is a clean-cut, conventional, soft spoken, upstanding member of the Rotary club.

If you're a science fiction fan, you'll probably love this. If you're opposed to the war, you'll probably find plenty of reason to like it. If you're just interested in a classic and influential work of American literature, Vonnegut makes you care about Billy and the people around him to stick with the abrupt changes in settings and time. He also makes you relate to the other characters around Billy- even the Germans, even the alien abductors, so you can relate to everything that's going on even when it's either tragic or surreal. We've all met people like Billy's wife, the soldier who saves his life, the English officers, and General "Wild" Bob.

TV Journalist Linda Elerbee has had a tag-line that she uses at the end of her reports for at least the last thirty years, turns out she may have copied it from Vonnegut. I never know what it meant until I read this book, it's actually a pretty sad and somber sentiment, "and so it goes."

This is a fast, funny, easy read that really makes you think. It is black humor, but it is a lot lighter than say "Night" by Elie Wiesel, but it certainly makes you think and even if it doesn't turn you into a pacifist, it will probably make you at least a little more empathetic to people around you. I hope.

I've read Elie Wiesel, Victor Frankel, Cory Ten Boom, & Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Somehow, this is the easiest story to take. No doubt because the brutal reality is tempered with not only the seemingly light hearted science fiction, but also with the superficial & banal life of the American bourgeoisie. Like any good humorist, Vonnegut let's us forget that this hell was real by making us imagine that it's fiction. We're comforted by imagining that the absurdity of his story is fabricated and temporary, when what we don't realize is, he is only mirroring the permanent absurdity of reality.

And if you're ever in Cody Wyoming, just ask for Wild Bob!" ...more

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Jul 08, 2009 Sean1977 rated it it was amazing

This is my all time favorite book. I finished it at 10:00 on a friday night, and started reading it again when I woke up saturday morning (not the whole thing just sections.)
My only warning to those who have yet read it is that the first chapter drags a little because the story begins at chapter 2, chapter one is more of an introduction.
This is the only book that when I see a bad review of it I think "how can that be posible?" ...more

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Sep 21, 2009 Michael Pischak rated it it was amazing

Shelves: adult-fiction, mind-blowing, science-fiction, top-25-book-read-in-my-lifetime

I carry this book with me everywhere just in case I have nothing with me to read. Vonnegut is God, and I am forever enthralled with the life of Billy Pilgrim. If only we could all see life 4th dimensionally like the Tralfamadorians.

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