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A review by yikesonspikes
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Recently, I felt nostalgic to read something Anthony Bourdain read and loved. I decided Vonnegut's work would be a safe choice compared to other authors Bourdain loved. So, I listened to Slaughterhouse-Five, narrated by Ethan Hawke. Slaughterhouse-Five tells the story of Billy Pilgrim, a man who is too young and small to be a soldier. He was never armed and was instead given the position of assistant to a chaplain. He was stationed at the front, became a prisoner of war, and was sent to Dresden just before the Allied forces bombed it. He somehow survived. When he returned to his hometown of Illium in upstate New York, he became an optometrist, husband, and father.
Throughout the novel, Pilgrim traveled in time due to his relationship with the Tralfamadorians, aliens who experience time like we humans experience space. For Tralfamadorians, time can be easily traversed. I was left wondering if, in the context of the book, Pilgrim experienced alien abduction or if he had a mental breakdown and continued to experience PTSD psychosis episodes related to his time in the war. The anachronistic telling of his life helps build confusion and an engaging portrayal of Pilgrim's psyche. Despite the narrator's insistence that the events in the book occurred, I believe we, as readers, are meant to feel unsure of the veracity of Pilgrim's story; the important part is that it was Pilgrim's lived reality.
Slaughterhouse-Five is classic American fiction. While the world was burning, Pilgrim disassociated and lived through the most horrific bombing in Europe with his naivete intact. There is something terrible, beautiful, and funny about Billy Pilgrim. For me, the repetition of "so it goes" was humorous, then annoying, but ultimately landed on meditative. Everything happens in Slaughterhouse-Five as in life, not as it should, but just as it does. So it goes.
Throughout the novel, Pilgrim traveled in time due to his relationship with the Tralfamadorians, aliens who experience time like we humans experience space. For Tralfamadorians, time can be easily traversed. I was left wondering if, in the context of the book, Pilgrim experienced alien abduction or if he had a mental breakdown and continued to experience PTSD psychosis episodes related to his time in the war. The anachronistic telling of his life helps build confusion and an engaging portrayal of Pilgrim's psyche. Despite the narrator's insistence that the events in the book occurred, I believe we, as readers, are meant to feel unsure of the veracity of Pilgrim's story; the important part is that it was Pilgrim's lived reality.
Slaughterhouse-Five is classic American fiction. While the world was burning, Pilgrim disassociated and lived through the most horrific bombing in Europe with his naivete intact. There is something terrible, beautiful, and funny about Billy Pilgrim. For me, the repetition of "so it goes" was humorous, then annoying, but ultimately landed on meditative. Everything happens in Slaughterhouse-Five as in life, not as it should, but just as it does. So it goes.