A review by rsuray
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

4.0

My second time reading through "Slaughterhouse-Five", and my overall ending question remains the same: is Tralfamadore real, and is Billy really able to time travel? Or is it all a giant parallel to the Bombing of Dresden and other war experiences, and "time travel" is really just a way for Billy to cope with the war and his PTSD flashbacks later in life? Thankfully, and the mark of a good novel, Vonnegut doesn't supply you with the answer. In fact, by making himself a character in the story, he seems to emphasize the possibility that Billy's experiences are real. Through each read-through of the novel, I have tended to side with the thought that Billy imagines Tralfamadore to cope with bad situations in life. However, this is the only Vonnegut that I've read so far, and I understand that he pulls the planet and its alien inhabitants into other novels....so I could very well be misunderstanding the intention of Tralfamadore. If anything, "Slaughterhouse-Five" is fun satire of a war that is hardly ever satirized.