Slaughterhouse Five Essay -- essays research papers

Slaughterhouse FiveBilly Pilgrim is born in 1922 and grows up in Ilium, New York. A funny-looking, rachitic y prohibitedh, he does well in high school, then he enrolls in night classes at the Ilium School of Optometry, and is soon drafted into the army. He serves as a chaplains assistant, is sent into the Battle of the Bulge, and almost gets taken prisoner by the Germans. Just before being captured he first becomes unstuck in time. He sees the entireness of his life in one sweep. Billy is transported with other privates to the beautiful city of Dresden. there the prisoners are made to work for their keep. They are kept in a former slaughterhouse. Billy and his fellow POWs survive in an airtight meat locker. They emerge to find a moonscape of destruction. Several days later Russian forces capture the city and the war is over. Billy returns to Ilium and finishes optometry school. He gets engaged to the daughter of the founder of the school. His wealthy father-in-law sets him up in the optometry business. Billy and his wife lay out two children and become wealthy.One day in 1967, as he claims on a radio talk show and in a garner to the editor, Billy is kidnapped by two-foot high aliens whose body shape is reminiscent of an upside down toilet plunger. These are the Tralfamadorians. They take him to Tralfamadore where they mate him with the actress Montana Wildhack and keep twain earthlings in a zoo. They also explain to him their perception of time, how all of it exists for them simultaneously in the fourth dimension. When someone dies he is simply dead at a particular time. Somewhere else and at a different time he is alive and well. Tralfamadorians prefer to look at the nice moments.When he is returned to earth, Billy ab initio says nothing. However, after he suffers a head injury in a plane crash and after his wife dies on her way to see him in the hospital, Billy tells the world what he has learned. He goes on a radio talk show and writes a letter to th e newspaper. His daughter is at her wits end and doesnt make out what to do with him. Billy makes a tape recording of his account of his death, which will occur in 1976 after Chicago has been hydrogen bombed by the Chinese. He knows but how it will happen a man he knew in the war will hire someone to shoot him. Billy will experience the regal hum of death, then will skip back to some other point in his life. Hes see... ...ughterhouse-Five, it seems that both the narrator and Billy Pilgrim are represented as author. The point of view in this book is the author is looking at the events of his own life past, present, and future and trying to make some sense out of them the same way that Billy is trying to order the events of his own life.The author uses short, simple sentences that manage to say a lot in a few words. The author also uses imagery. He also puts in his book references to historical events. These references increase the understanding and appreciation of Billys story by suggesting historical and literary parallels to the face-to-face events in his life. The unexampled does not have smooth transitions from one event to the next.A normal novel has smooth transition. Vonnegut wrote this book without any smooth transition. This novel is very complicated. The topics that are mention are hard to understand. The book was a bit difficult to follow. Slaughter House-Fives characters needs more depth. More description is necessary. There was too much jumping around in time in Billys life. I thought that this book was going to be bankrupt than it actually was.I wouldnt recommend this book to a person wh