How long is the book slaughterhouse five

Although he attempted to describe in simple terms what happened and to create a linear narrative, this strategy never worked for him. Vonnegut wrote Slaughterhouse-Five as a response to war. Vonnegut was an outspoken pacifist and critic of the conflict. Slaughterhouse-Five revolves around the willful incineration of , civilians, in a city of extremely dubious military significance, during an arguably just war.

Appearing when it did, then, Slaughterhouse-Five made a forceful statement about the campaign in Vietnam, a war in which incendiary technology was once more being employed against nonmilitary targets in the name of a dubious cause.

SparkTeach Teacher's Handbook. Who is the narrator of Slaughterhouse-Five? What does the epigraph mean? Why is Billy upset when he sees the barbershop quartet? All of them decided they needed to come at the atrocity at an angle, so to speak, not to face it head on, because to do that would be unbearable.

And little Oskar with his tin drum, drumming the beats of history, is, like Billy Pilgrim who has come unstuck in time, lovable. From opposite sides, German and American, these two deranged child-men give us our finest portraits of the great derangement of their time. That is what realism is. Its final passage describes the end of the war and the liberation of the prisoners, who include Billy Pilgrim and Vonnegut himself.

But it is cheerfulness nonetheless. Fifty years after its first publication, seventy-four years after Kurt Vonnegut was inside Slaughterhouse-Five during the firebombing of Dresden, what does his great novel have to say to us? It tells us that human nature is the one great constant of life on earth, and it beautifully and truthfully shows us human nature neither at its best nor at its worst but how it mostly is, most of the time, even when the times are terrible.

All we have to do is build something big, like the Pyramids or the Great Wall of China. Maybe the wall that some individual whom I will not name is planning to build between the United States and Mexico will be read as an urgent message on Tralfamadore. The person who wants to build the wall will not know what the message means, of course. He is a pawn, being manipulated by a power greater than his to send the message in this time of great emergency.

By Salman Rushdie. By Troy Patterson. By The New Yorker. That was I. That was me. That was the author of this book. What do you say, Harrison Starr? Billy Pilgrim is lovable. Enter your e-mail address. We use cookies to serve you certain types of ads, including ads relevant to your interests on Book Depository and to work with approved third parties in the process of delivering ad content, including ads relevant to your interests, to measure the effectiveness of their ads, and to perform services on behalf of Book Depository.

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Description "A desperate, painfully honest attempt to confront the monstrous crimes of the twentieth century. Centering on the infamous World War II firebombing of Dresden, the novel is the result of what Vonnegut describes as a twenty-three-year struggle to write a book about what he himself witnessed as an American prisoner of war. It combines science fiction, autobiography, humor, historical fiction, and satire in an account of the life of Billy Pilgrim, a barber's son turned draftee turned optometrist turned alien abductee.

Billy, like Vonnegut, experiences the destruction of Dresden as a POW, and, as with Vonnegut, it is the defining moment of his life. Unlike the author, he also experiences time travel, or coming "unstuck in time. Praise for Slaughterhouse-Five "Poignant and hilarious, threaded with compassion and, behind everything, the cataract of a thundering moral statement.

Other books in this series. Slaughterhouse-Five Kurt Vonnegut. Add to basket. Its fruit was diamonds. It attracted human beings who killed each other around the roots and made very good fertilizer. What an absolutely dead-on, if cynical, summation of the effects of a capitalist-driven society. We Tralfamadorians read them all at once, not one after the other. There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at one time.

In a way, many of them apply to life in general. Sometimes the effect is annoying, sometimes funny, and sometimes just devastating. Pay attention. Art is a profound act of optimism, especially in the face of acts of meaningless violence and slaughter. Jul 10, Fergus rated it it was amazing. Life can be so unutterably sad. And Americans always jazz up their sadness.

Big Bands became the perfect anodyne to stark terror. So you jazz it up big time yourself - you start to prefer your mini-vacations on Trafalmador over more mundane hot spots. Like, for example, foxholes. Because where there is carrion like us there the crows gather. And they have gizzards to take care of your bones. You know, had Kurt Vonnegut been a believer he might have considerably mollified his trauma. Or even reading books by and about declared Aspies, like I do now, may have helped do the trick.

But alas, dear Kurt, back then they shot first and asked questions later. No wonder their Jazz was in as much demand as a good, stiff drink back then. For you too, Kurt - you picked up their old-time jazzy zaniness And just marched on into doomed Dresden - Dreaming of long-lost Tralfamador.

View all 16 comments. Sep 21, Dan Schwent rated it really liked it Shelves: Billy Pilgrim becomes unstuck in time and experiences the events of his life out of chronological order.

War and absurdity ensue. I've never read Kurt Vonnegut up until now and when Slaughterhouse-Five showed up in my cheapo ebook email a few days ago, I decided it was time. Get it? Slaughterhouse-Five is often classified as science fiction but it reads more like Kurt Vonnegut trying to make sense of his World War II experiences through a humorous at times science fiction story. It also seems to Billy Pilgrim becomes unstuck in time and experiences the events of his life out of chronological order.

It also seems to be a Big Important Book, due to novelly things like themes of anti-war and the absurdities that come with it. It also uses a non-linear plot structure to illustrate the timey-wimey nature of Billy's affliction. There's not really a whole lot to tell. Slaughterhouse-Five is basically a collection of non-chronological events in Billy Pilgrim's life: his experiences in World War II, his life after the war, and his abduction by the Tralfamadorians, aliens who view events in time simultaneously rather than chronologically.

The bleakness and black humor go together surprisingly well, like beer and White Castles. I have to wonder, though, if Slaughterhouse-Five would be as highly regarded as it is if it didn't land on so many banned book lists over the years. Nothing like some controversy to get people to read. While it wasn't pants-shittingly awesome, I enjoyed it quite a bit and I'll likely pick up another Vonnegut book in the future. Four out of five stars. View all 37 comments. Rating: 4.

In a plot-scrambling display of virtuosity, we follow Pilgrim simultaneously through all phases of his life, concentrating on his and Vonnegut's shattering experience as an American prisoner of war who witnesses the firebombing of Dresden. Don't let the ease of reading fool you Rating: 4. Don't let the ease of reading fool you - Vonnegut's isn't a conventional, or simple, novel. He writes, "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.

Like Catch- 22 , it fashions the author's experiences in the Second World War into an eloquent and deeply funny plea against butchery in the service of authority. Slaughterhouse-Five boasts the same imagination, humanity, and gleeful appreciation of the absurd found in Vonnegut's other works, but the book's basis in rock-hard, tragic fact gives it a unique poignancy - and humor.

Today's prompt is to select your very favorite American novel in honor of the Fourth of July. That would take a few zillion hours of internal debate, creation of endless lists, rebellious actions like breaking things down into genre lists, muttering over who counts as American Teju Cole is, but Henry James isn't: Discuss , etc. Decision made for me, in this case, by the fact that I'm trying to strong-arm myself into making a dent in the embarrassingly long list of things I've read, re-read, or abandoned since I got all grumpus.

And here we are! Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters. Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money.

They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say Napoleonic times. Many novelties have come from America. The most startling of these, a thing without precedent, is a mass of undignified poor.

They do not love one another because they do not love themselves. May 23, J. Sutton rated it it was amazing. At first, the absurdity of Slaughterhouse-Five now read 5 times makes it difficult to take seriously.

However, part of Vonnegut's magic is that this absurdity becomes impossible to ignore and increasingly powerful as the narrative moves forward. Vonnegut actually wants you to focus on the absurd. It works itself not only into the narrative, where our protagonist becomes unstuck in time and is abducted by aliens, but also into questions about war, civilization, identity and theories of time a At first, the absurdity of Slaughterhouse-Five now read 5 times makes it difficult to take seriously.

It works itself not only into the narrative, where our protagonist becomes unstuck in time and is abducted by aliens, but also into questions about war, civilization, identity and theories of time and how this impacts perceptions of life and death. Slaughterhouse-Five didn't grab me right away, but as I continued to read, Vonnegut's explorations become more intriguing and insightful.

I know I've commented on Vonnegut's perspective on the world in other reviews. You wonder how Vonnegut made the leaps he did and when you think about them there's something completely rational about these leaps which are taken to possibly irrational extremes. In any event, Slaughterhouse-Five is a book I wouldn't hesitate to recommend; Vonnegut's unique perspective continues to be fresh and interesting And so it goes!

View all 5 comments. Jan 06, Adina rated it it was amazing Shelves: classics , , humor , w-mwl-alternative , fantasy-sf , short. Still on my mind after more than 1 year. This was such a pleasant surprise.

This book has been on my to-read list since the beginning of my activity on Goodreads and I did a good job avoiding to read it. I was sure I would not like it since: 1. I thought this science-fiction satire style was not for me. I only wanted to read it because it is a classic and I resolved to read more of those modern or not. This book kept bumping on different lists so I could not escape its lure. Oh, I judged this book so wrongly.

Actually, I liked it a lot. I thought the time travelling, the fractured prose and the detached tone of the narrator were very effective to portrait the Dresden atrocities and how to witness this can impact your life forever. View all 10 comments. Mar 19, Dave Russell rated it it was amazing Shelves: novels. Why do I love this book?

I love it because of the villains. Not just the obviously villainous Paul Lazzaro--although he's one of the great villains of modern fiction. During the hellishness of war all he can think about is his own petty need to avenge slights done to him--but the larger, less obvious villains in this book: the Tralfamdorians.

Vonnegut hated being categorized as "science fiction" because most science fiction at the time was just juvenile male wish fulfillment, which he clearly was not interested in. In fact he kind of satirizes that kind of thing in this book. His aliens are much more fascinating than that. The Tralfamdorians aren't much interested in Jesus Christ's message of universal love. They're more interested in the message of Charles Darwin, that beings die to improve the species.

At least that's the message as they see it. Like I said they're villains. To them the idea of free will is silly. Well, villains can be right sometimes.

The world is structured in a way that everything that happens is meant to happen and there's nothing we can do about it. Concern for human feelings is useless and therefore we shouldn't give a second thought to massacres and slaughter. Just say "and so it goes," and move on. This was certainly the feeling of the Nazis with their belief in the destiny of the everlasting Reich or whatever the phrase is, and the Communists with their belief that the road to the future must be built on the corpses of the present.

One million deaths is a statistic. They put him in an enclosure where all his needs, material and sexual, are met and where he is protected from the poisonous gas outside. To mankind their philosophy provides an escape from moral responsibility. In the first chapter of the book Vonnegut tells his friend he is writing an anti-war book. His friend responds that he "might as well write an anti-glacier book," and Vonnegut kind of agrees with him. And yet he wrote the book anyway.

Yes, death is inevitable, but to Vonnegut humanity is also worth mourning. What happened to Edgar Derby is worth relating, and we should be moved by it. May 08, Seemita rated it really liked it Shelves: other-awards-w , war , historical-fiction , america , fiction. Kurt Vonnegut. Four syllables, once pronounced, suspends in the air like a rock star swishing his name into the air for chanters to latch on and treble the echo.

Slaughter-House Five, god knows how many syllables depending on stress-points of your tongue , once sprinkled from the nozzle of mouth, hangs again in the air like a vagabond wrapper not finding a parapet to land.

Perhaps both could have gone their way and not bothered to float into my fairly tranquil world. But they chose to break the Kurt Vonnegut. But they chose to break the silence. War time account is what both brought with them. I have read Dostoyevsky and that man loves darkness. But this man and his creation loves death.

But I stuck like a blinking golliwog, with eyes dancing to the shadows of death. Read it again; I did. But the Trafalmadorians are a vulnerable lot which became rather apparent at their inability to stop their inmates from slipping through the porous boundaries of war-afflicted memories and reconstructed memories.

I was now tempered to balance on that boundary; of fiction and fact, of figment and whole. The duo still sounded weird but substantially weird. And I know one thing for sure: when someone holds me long captivated with excessive humor, I invariably become the beneficiary of stark truths hidden under his tongue.

So, I lurked around till this duo pulled aside a curtain and showed me a slaughter-house. It was supposed to house meat but instead housed prisoners; and incidentally, turned a good refuge till it lasted.

As I was about to alight and walk into the slaughter-house myself, the twosome giggled in mock incredulity, flicked the sand time-keeper upside down and blurted, How nice -- to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive. And all of a sudden, with just a switch, we swapped places and it was I who was fighting the wars, licking my scars, shoveling bodies, snapping bonds, mimicking death, eulogizing events and peeking from a window towards a world that still hadn't changed character and was continuing to pay no heed to me.

I wondered what happened. View all 45 comments. There are no characters here, really. Billy Pilgrim and the others are flat flat flat. Vonnegut's point being that the suffering brought on by the war dehumanized and diminished everyone to one-dimensionality. It's an interesting idea and a perfect match for his spare style. I remember reading the book thirty years ago and thinking it rather comic.

On this second reading the humor morphed to bleakest gravitas. The phrase "so it goes," repeated after every mention of death, becomes tiresome. Halfway through I started mentally deleting it from the text. This improved the book somewhat.

There is a section in which Billy Pilgrim, due to his capture by extraterrestrials—the Tralfamadorians—for whom time is constant, not linear, watches a war film in reverse. American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France, a few German planes flew at them backward, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen.

The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers, and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. The containers were stored neatly in racks. The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes.

They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes. But there were still a few wounded Americans, though, and some of the bombers were in bad repair. Over France, though, German fighters came up again, and made everything and everybody as good as new This germ of an idea, I suspect, was later expanded by Martin Amis in his Holocaust novel, Time's Arrow.

Here's a brief quote from Time's Arrow to support my claim: We'd picked up this batch from the mass grave, in the woods, and stood waiting by the van on the approach road while the carbon monoxide went about its work.

All my men were dressed as doctors. We then drove them closer to town, where one of our men was readying the piles of clothes. Out they all filed. Among them was a mother and a baby, both naked, naturally, for now.

The baby was weeping in a determined, muscular, long-haul rhythm, probably from earache. We then escorted this group of thirty souls into a low warehouse littered with primitive sewing machines and spindles. These Jews, led by the weeping baby, made their solemn way past a series of curtains and blankets and, one by one, backed their way through a missing panel in the wall.

This panel I myself replaced with a softly spoken "Guten Tag. I was moved, by their continued silence, by the baby's muffled cries.