... a conversation with the cab driver about life under communism. It is to this man, Gerhard Muller, as well as to O'Hare's wife Mary, that Vonnegut dedicates Slaughterhouse-Five. Muller later sends O'Hare a Christmas card with wishes for world peace. Vonnegut relates his unsuccessful attempts to write about Dresden in the twenty- three years since his return. He is very proud of the outline of ... novels of Kilgore Trout. Billy's mother visits him, and he covers his head with a blanket. Back in Germany, Edgar Derby keeps watch over Billy's sickbed. Billy remembers Derby's death by firing s...

• Word Count: 5323
• Approx Pages: 21
• Grade Level: High School

Many writers in history have written science fiction novels and had great success with them, but only a few have been as enduring over time as Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five. Slaughterhouse-Five is a personal novel which draws upon Vonnegut's experience's as a scout in World War Two, his capture and becoming a prisoner of war, and his witnessing of the fire bombing of Dresden in February of 1945, the greatest ... more than peaks in a range of mountains, irremovable and able to be visited numerous times. The point of view that Slaughterhouse-Five is written from also affects the way the r...

• Word Count: 1028
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

... kids. The men could not think of any particularly good memories or stories, and the narrator noticed that Mary, Bernard's wife (to whom Slaughterhouse Five is dedicated), seemed very angry about something. Finally, she confronted him: the narrator and Bernard were just babies when they fought. Mary was ... was written by a pillar of salt. He gives us the first line and the last, and the central story of the novel is ready to begin. MY COMMENTS: I've read several Kurt Vonnegut books in the past, including this one. It has been a couple of years since I first read Slaughterhouse Five, and ...

• Word Count: 7795
• Approx Pages: 31
• Grade Level: High School

... Dresden. Shortly after the Americans arrived in Dresden, the city was completely destroyed by relentless bombing from the Allied forces. 135,000 people - German (civilian and military), Americans, and other allied prisoners of war - were killed. So it goes. The different forms of imagery in Slaughterhouse Five are one of Vonnegut's primary tools for bringing this nonlinear story together. For example, when the pitifully ... book is the bird singing outside of Billy's window in the hospital, where the question is asked again, but the reader still has no answer. Without Vonnegut's use of ...

• Word Count: 1466
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: High School

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut I.Character List Billy Pilgrim - The main character of the novel. A weak soldier in World War II, Billy learns how to time travel, to the ... his hometown of Ilium, New York, as an optometrist, with his wife and has 2 children. He is later taken by aliens, Trafalmadorians, and transported to a zoo on their home planet. Vonnegut - In the first and last chapters, Vonnegut explains why he wrote this novel. Also, throughout some war scenes, he describes himself as being a character, most ... at Billy's eighteenth anniversary party, and on the plane that crash...

• Word Count: 1657
• Approx Pages: 7
• Grade Level: High School

Is the Future Known? (Revision) The book Slaughterhouse-Five is an effort by the author Kurt Vonnegut to try to deglamorize war. He tried to tell people that World War II was not a battle of heroic men fighting heroic men but instead young boys fighting other young ... of the Rocky Mountains. All time is time it does not change. It does not lend its self to warning or explanation. It simply is. Take it moment by moment." (86) Vonnegut wrote the book Slaughterhouse-Five as if it was written for a Trafamadorian. The importance is not put on the middle or the end but in "The depths of many marv...

• Word Count: 1091
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

... of the story are true, more or less, and that Vonnegut experienced the Dresden bombings firsthand. The jumbled narrative structure is Vonnegut's way of telling his story of Dresden. The setting of Slaughterhouse-Five is wide-ranged, each place having a significant effect on Vonnegut's story through the life of Billy Pilgrim. The three most ... what seems a normal life. Germany is another important setting in the book, especially the city of Dresden. During the war Billy pilgrim is captured by the Germans and is held as a prisoner of war in Dresden. In Germany Billy undergoes the painfu...

• Word Count: 521
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut appears to be a simplistic story of a man's experiences in World War II. To many people a may be just that. When the plot is looked at closer and the word choice ... " is a phrase used throughout the entire book many times. This phrase shows up whenever the character Billy Pilgrim encounters death. He is basically saying that death is no big deal. Vonnegut even uses the phrase "so it goes" in the first chapter to describe himself as a "pillar of salt"(22). He calls the book a failure, this helps to support the ... fact that war is always a failure and that...

• Word Count: 679
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

... time and travel reveals his philosophical view toward free will. Throughout Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut argues that the loss of free will is affected by a parallel of controllable and uncontrollable events that occur in the life of the protagonist, Billy Pilgrim. Vonnegut argues that Billy's loss of free will results from his experiences ... primary decisions he must make. He seems to always be the passive receiver of various actions rather than the aggressive initiator. Through war, Vonnegut shows how free will is lost in several ways. One example is through death. While finishi...

• Word Count: 971
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

... Slaughterhouse-Five By Kurt Vonnegut Slaughterhouse-Five sounded like a little above average book in the beginning. I was actually quite pleased that we were required to read it, because I would have probably of not made the right choice and have chosen it. I found it quite amusing, to be following a character named Billy Pilgrim who is spastic through time, and who was once abducted by ... aliens, called Traflamadorians. The spastic changes of the time of where the story takes place is confusing but amusing, however, I am grateful that Kurt Vonnegut still left a main story line which he...

• Word Count: 290
• Approx Pages: 1
• Grade Level: High School

... authors have depicted the glory, chivalry, horror, and morbidity of warfare. The novels Slaughterhouse Five and Beau Geste depict very different ideals of war and the undeniable consequences of military service. The foremost and most obvious difference is the way in which the two authors portray their main characters. Vonnegut's Billy Pilgrim defies any conventional mold of a wartime hero. Originally enrolled as ... hadn't enough layers, and he was constantly dragging himself through snow and icy wind. In many great wartime stories, the hardened veterans recall their comrades who stuck b...

• Word Count: 952
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

The firebombing on Dresden was one of the worst attacks during World War II. Billy Pilgrim, the main character in Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, experiences this firebombing first hand. Billy was my favorite character in the story because everything abnormal happened to him yet he seemed so innocent. Billy was truly my favorite character ... 's life was almost perfect there much unlike on earth. This part of the story broke away in a totally different direction than the war. Vonnegut could have written a whole story just about Billy's experiences on Tralfamadore. In my opinion, Vonnegu...

• Word Count: 471
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

... are many dynamic communities in the book Slaughterhouse Five. The main character, Billy Pilgrim, is a member of several of these communities and plays a drastically different role in each one. In his hometown of ... they are married, Billy is put in charge of a successful optometry practice, but receives little help from Valencia's father. They continue to positively establish themselves in the community by starting a family and buying a big house. Billy even becomes the head of the local "Lion's Club", but is still unexplainably in content with his life there. ... following three fello...

• Word Count: 728
• Approx Pages: 3

The title of my book is Slaughter House-Five. The author is Kurt Vonnegut. This book was published in 1969. I chose this book because it sounded like an interesting war novel. The main character in this book is Billy Pilgrim. Billy is ... World War II captured Billy Pilgrim. When he was released he was assigned to work hard labor in Dresden, Germany. While Billy was in Dresden the city was bombed by the Ally air force. Billy and many others managed to survive. He then returned to his home in Ilium, New York and becomes an optometrist. On the night ... of his daughter's wedding he was capture...

• Word Count: 535
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

... how it demonstrates the truth of this text. A poem which i have read recently and shows how a poem can teach us the enormous effect of a few words is 'Disabled' by Wilfred Owen. The poem was written at the time of world war 1. It is about a young man who returns from war as a 'broken old' man. His apperance has ... He has lost both his legs and part of his arm. He is confined to a wheelhair for the remainder of his life. However hurt he is by his injuries, his pain is greater in his heart. Emotionally, he is dead, drained. He joined the army to gain respect from friends and to be longed ...

• Word Count: 897
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

... the tortures, prisons and gas chambers they were put through. Using a "d" alliteration in the line "strong drugs dope me", the poet insinuates how humans sin by poisoning, numbing and wasting themselves and each other. The "racks" torture their victim, stretching them to their limits in immense pain and agony. The play on ... killing, a horrible slippery red, splashing as though in a bath. The third main reference to war is in the fourth stanza, "my life when the murder by means of my / hands". This line shows that most people do not have a choice about going to war, so they are basica...

• Word Count: 2163
• Approx Pages: 9
• Grade Level: High School

... In this sentence, a knife isn't really 'knifing' them, so this shows that personification is used. Also in Verse One, consonance is also used. He writes "worried by silence, sentries, whisper, curious, nervous". Throughout this sentence, we can hear a repeated 's' sound. This helps to show that they were worried as the 's' makes the ... get across that it seems to be soft and gentle but it's ironic as the snow seems to be a great danger towards them. In Verse Five, we start to sense that the men are beginning to hallucinate. They begin thinking that the snow is out to get them. This may ...

• Word Count: 2121
• Approx Pages: 8
• Grade Level: High School

Dulce Et Decorum Est is a poem written by Wilfred Owen set during world war 1 written in 1917, and talks about the trials and hardships that soldiers went through. The persona tells of how he and his battalion are ... ...

• Word Count: 690
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... . In conclusion, the Normandy battle acts as a parallel element to Reuven at the hospital because it shows Reuven's problems at a larger scale. The situation creates a need to resolve the conflict by either making up with Danny or working together to defeat the Germans. Even the fact that Reuven's eye may not recover closely relates to the allies and their war with ... ...

• Word Count: 501
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

... participants in combat but who were nonetheless beneficiaries of the opportunities, resources, and lands opened up the conquest and displacement of Indians" (502). Even though the women were left widowed by the battles, the women were still part of the invading force and beneficiaries of the natives. Putting the white pioneer women in the history with the Indian war is in ... ...

• Word Count: 595
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

... heads than to stop the suffering of so many innocent European lives. In 1938, Auden visited the Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels and views a painting called "Fall of Icarus" by Peter Brueghel. As they say, life imitates art, and this painting struck a chord with Auden, as he saw in it a very relevant example of the apathy and moral crisis which ... ...

• Word Count: 1021
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

My book is entitled A Separate Peace, written by John Knowles. The copyright date is 1959, and this book contains 196 pages. The scene takes place in the Devon School, in New Hampshire. It is the summer of 1942 ( ... ...

• Word Count: 708
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

The story of Monica Sone (or Kazuko as called by her parents), a Japanese girl who grew up in Seattle during the 1920s and 1930s, showed the readers another side of the life of immigrants in the United States. Her story ... during this time. When Monica's parents went looking for a summer house in Alki, they got rejected many times because of their Japanese root. Moreover, Monica and her siblings were criticized by Japanese kids for being Americans when they traveled to Japan, yet they couldn't blend in with the American mainstream due to widespread discrimination toward Japanese people. The...

• Word Count: 737
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... military life. Raised in the carefree, luxurious life of the British upper classes, Sassoon was at first a strong believer of war; however, his attitude completely changed as he became angered by those who profited at the expense of others. "Base Details" is an example of him expressing anti-war sentiment. The sarcastic tone of Sassoon reveals his true thoughts ... are described as "glum heroes" (3), which have the suggestion of serious but tolerant sadness because of the situation they find themselves in. The speaker also describes the majors by representing them as uncaring when they ...

• Word Count: 785
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

... well. In 1945 Robert used his lettering artistry and engraving skills to forge passports and ID papers for the French Resistance. Doisneau is known for his 1950's image "Kiss by the Town Hall." It shows a couple kissing in the busy streets of Paris. I think people liked it so much because it gave a lot to relate to. It's showing one ... of the small happy moments we get in our lives and how sometimes we just need to stop and really enjoy those moments before they're gone. By having the couple be the main focus and then the background out of focus you can see that this could have been Ro...

• Word Count: 665
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School