Slaughterhouse Five as an Anti-war Novel

            

               “Slaughterhouse Five” by Kurt Vonnegut is a book about his experience at the bombing of the city of Dresden during World War Two. Using a fictional character named Billy Pilgrim, Vonnegut describes his reaction to the war while making the book seem more fictional than nonfiction. While writing about the events that Billy experiences, Vonnegut is sending out a big anti-war message. He is stating that war isn’t all about glory and heroism; it is about human suffering and loss.

               First off, the title of the book isn’t just Slaughterhouse Five. The book also has another title called The Children’s Crusade. This is important in that Vonnegut is sending the message that the war wasn’t fought by men, it was fought by people who were too young to be experience the horrors of war. In the beginning chapter of the Book, Vonnegut tells us the story about how the title came to be. When he was meeting with fellow veteran O’Hare, the wife of O’Hare got angry. She didn’t want Vonnegut to write about how he marched off to Europe and claimed a lot of glory. She says, “You'll pretend you were men instead of babies, and you'll be played in the movies by Frank Sinatra and John Wayne or some of those other glamorous, war-loving, dirty old men. And war will look just wonderful, so we'll have a lot more of them. And they'll be fought by babies like the babies upstairs”. She wanted him to write the book in a way that it wouldn’t encourage others to go off to war. By including this story, Vonnegut is taking a more serious stance on the war. He is stating that the events that happened in the book shouldn’t be taken lightly, and should be respect in their brutal nature.

               In the actual text that features Billy Pilgrim, Vonnegut keeps his promise to O’Hare’s wife. Rather than having the events in the book seem heroic, he makes everything brutal and states that heroism has no place in the book. One stand-out scene is the capture of Robert Weary and Billy Pilgrim by German soldiers. At first, you get sense of their being almost this fantasy happening with Weary and the two scouts. Vonnegut writes that the trio call themselves the Three Musketeers. This gives us an image of three heroes marching off the fight the big bad Germans. Unfortunately, this comes to a sad, and realistic end. The two scouts get shot in the back, while Weary ends up dying from Gangrene. Vonnegut is stating that fantasy and happy endings don’t exist in war. Instead, you just get lots of death. He writes “Three inoffensive bangs came from far away. They came from German rifles. The two scouts who had ditched Billy and Weary had just been shot”. Vonnegut has this casual tone of voice, almost like the deaths of the scouts were just another statistic. This sends the message that war isn’t all fun and games, it is just a game of death.

               Overall, Slaughterhouse Five really has this anti-war vibe to it. The mere descriptions of what happens to Billy is enough to almost frighten readers away. The discussing the reality of war, Vonnegut sends a message that states that war is not fun for anybody.