Bookshot #4: Slaughterhouse Five

Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut

The vaguely auto-biographical story of Vonnegut's experiences during World War II, when, as a prisoner of war he lived through and witnessed the aftermath of the firebombing of Dresden, Germany Slaughterhouse Five is deceptive in that it doesn't seem like it would be a book to send a powerful message against the senseless destruction of human life until it actually does so.

This was not a difficult book to read by any stretch of the imagination, but it is damned difficult to characterize just exactly what this book is. There's touches of auto-biography here and there, as Vonnegut's introduction blends into the story at points, with the author breaking the 'fourth wall' here and there to communicate directly with the reader as well being present in his now famous alter-ego, the science fiction author Kilgore Trout. But there are also flying saucers and time travel and history all mixed together and it seemed like a recipe for total disaster, but it's not. This book works amazingly well- there's something sparse and simple about Vonnegut's style of writing that sucks the reader in and keeps the reader reading until the last pages and chapters describing the horror of Dresden and the aftermath almost leap out of the page at you. At that point, all the time traveling and flying saucers fall away and the story becomes all too real.

But: Slaughterhouse Five is the story of Billy Pilgrim, who has come unstuck in time. Relieving the moments of his life, leading from his birth, to his time in World War II (where he is captured behind the lines and witnesses the firebombing of Dresden), his marriage, a few escapes with death and eventual kidnapping by aliens, in no particular order, he flips through in a fractured journey through time that encompasses the whole book. An optometrist by trade, Billy loses his father during basic training for World War II- he eventually loses his wife to carbon monoxide poisoning and further still, he himself is killed in New York- fulfilling a promise that a fellow soldier makes to have him killed after the war. Along the way, weaving in between the moments of Billy's life, the pieces of his experience in World War II gradually emerge- how he was captured behind enemy lines sometime after the Battle of the Bulge, eventually winding up in Dresden, where he and his fellow POWs work in a slaughterhouse that really is called Slaughterhouse Five.

So where do the flying saucers come into the picture? Well, the back of the book says this:

Centering on the infamous firebombing of Dreseden, Billy Pilgrim's odyssey through time reflects the mythic journey of our own fractured lives as we search for meaning in what we fear most.

I'm not sure I buy into that, but what I do think is that involving aliens (the Trafamaldorians) who have a non-linear view of time allows Vonnegut to play with the notion of time throughout the course of his book. So to me, I came to see them more as a plot device rather than an integral or important part of the book- but I could be totally wrong on that analysis. As for Billy's journey through time: well, upon further reflection, I'd say that it could be emblematic of the struggles that many veterans of all wars deal with when they come home. How do you witness the horrors of war and then try and get on with your life as best you can? Some people manage it better than others, but I would guess that the one thing you can never really escape is the memories leaping out at you at random points- not unlike Billy Pilgrim's fractured journey through time. But again, that may just be me talking out my ass.

Overall: a deceptively powerful book. An easy read, with Vonnegut's sparse writing style not challenging the reader overly much, but building to a powerful climax which propels Slaughterhouse Five into the category of being, as the back of the book also says, 'one of the world's great antiwar books.'