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A review by precise
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
challenging
dark
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
I read Slaughterhouse-Five for the first time in high school. I found all of Vonnegut's work at the time to be highly compelling, to the point where for my senior quote in high school I chose the quote that is prominently featured in The Sirens of Titan. It is worth mentioning here that I also consider the period from midway through my junior year of high school until the start of my junior year of college to be the absolute lowest point I have experienced or likely will ever experience in my life.
I reread Slaughterhouse-Five in advance of a trip to the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library. I am glad that I did. It definitely enhanced the museum exhibits to see, for example, the ceremonial WWII saber that Vonnegut took home from his service on display (not particularly called out at the museum as such, but mentioned multiple times in the book).
I also found Slaughterhouse-Five to say much more about trauma and stress than I remembered. It may make sense that I didn't remember this - see above re lowest point in my life when I first read it - for all that I experienced stress and trauma as a teenager, I don't remember a lot from then anymore. A naive assumption one might hold about trauma is that Billy revisits the worst times in his life over and over. Instead, he travels at random through things that definitely happened in his life and things that might not have, a much more nuanced metaphor for feeling adrift and like agency has been taken from you in the wake of a traumatic experience. I was also reminded, having also read The Body Keeps The Score less than a year ago, of how recent our modern mental health constructs are and how post-traumatic stress treatment was not really available to Vonnegut's generation.
Overall - the book is fairly short, it's not satisfying and it's not meant to be. It does a good job of capturing a specific mood, and is worth reading for that even though it's not a pleasant mood.
I reread Slaughterhouse-Five in advance of a trip to the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library. I am glad that I did. It definitely enhanced the museum exhibits to see, for example, the ceremonial WWII saber that Vonnegut took home from his service on display (not particularly called out at the museum as such, but mentioned multiple times in the book).
I also found Slaughterhouse-Five to say much more about trauma and stress than I remembered. It may make sense that I didn't remember this - see above re lowest point in my life when I first read it - for all that I experienced stress and trauma as a teenager, I don't remember a lot from then anymore. A naive assumption one might hold about trauma is that Billy revisits the worst times in his life over and over. Instead, he travels at random through things that definitely happened in his life and things that might not have, a much more nuanced metaphor for feeling adrift and like agency has been taken from you in the wake of a traumatic experience. I was also reminded, having also read The Body Keeps The Score less than a year ago, of how recent our modern mental health constructs are and how post-traumatic stress treatment was not really available to Vonnegut's generation.
Overall - the book is fairly short, it's not satisfying and it's not meant to be. It does a good job of capturing a specific mood, and is worth reading for that even though it's not a pleasant mood.
Content Warnings
Graphic: War
Moderate: Injury/Injury detail, Excrement, Cursing, Death, Medical trauma, and Schizophrenia/Psychosis
I listed a lot of content warnings to be on the safe side but I would not warn most people about them explicitly before recommending this book