Slaughterhouse-Five

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Manufacturer: Kurt Vonnegut
Brand: Classics, Historical Fiction, Sci-Fi
Brew: Paperback
Steeping Time: 275 pages
Tea Service: Personal Choice
Strength:

Synopsis: Slaughterhouse-Five is one of the world’s great anti-war books. Centering on the infamous firebombing of Dresden, Billy Pilgrim’s odyssey through time reflects the mythic journey of our own fractured lives as we search for meaning in what we are afraid to know.

I found it interesting that there isn’t a back blurb synopsis for Slaughterhouse-Five. But then again, I have no idea how I’d sum up this book, either.

Let me start by saying I loved Slaughterhouse-Five. It’s such a strange, wild ride. My only complaint is that I didn’t read it with a discussion group of some sort so that I could decode and discuss it after I finished it. This review is going to be so short, in part because I don’t know how to put into words what this story was or how I felt about it.

Slaughterhouse-Five is so many things wrapped into one. It’s part humor, part horror, part sci-fi, part autobiography, part historical fiction, part general fiction. Part practically everything. Critics have called it one of the greatest anti-war books ever written (per the back of the book), but I’ve heard others say that it’s also therapeutic in its own way for those who have served in the same capacity as Billy Pilgrim did; a lowly foot soldier that carried out orders he didn’t know the bigger picture of. I can’t speak to that, as I haven’t served in the military, but I can appreciate that point of view.

I found Slaughterhouse-Five a deep look into the head and heart of a man who didn’t want to do harm but was placed in a position where that option was practically taken away.

Vonnegut threads sorrow throughout the narrative, and even in the second title, The Children’s Crusade: A Duty-Dance With Death. In that alone, you can see the heart of the issue. Wars are fought on the backs of people barely old enough to know adulthood. Of course, men and women of all ages fight and die in war. But by the time Billy sees combat towards the end of WWII, he’s surrounded by boys like himself, just out of high school and stepping into the world.

Another feeling that Slaughterhouse-Five left me with was one of helplessness and in more ways than one. I felt it on the surface in terms of not knowing where the book was going or what part of the timeline I’d end up in next. It wasn’t a frustrated helplessness, just one of ambivalence. I simply accepted that this was going to be one crazy ride, and I held on. But deeper than that is Billy’s sense of helplessness throughout the book, especially during his service in wartime. He’s living through a situation where he has no control. Everything is happening to him rather than because of his actions. Billy isn’t just holding on but gripping to life with cold panic while trying to maintain composure.

Finishing Slaughterhouse-Five left me in a quiet, contemplative state that stayed with me for days.

It was a lot to comprehend and so very much to think about. In the end, I kept returning to the one passage that stayed with me more than any other. It left me in tears the first time I read it, and admittedly, I’m tearing up now just thinking about it.

I hope it moves you just as deeply.

‘American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France, a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation.

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, made everything and everybody as good as new.

When the bombers got back to their base, the the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating day and night, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again.’

Vonnegut, 1969, 74-75

Imagine what we could do if we helped each other more than we hurt each other.

Have you read Slaughterhouse-Five? Leave a comment and let me know what you thought about it! Want to read it for yourself? Click here to get a copy of your own.
Cheers,
Lydia