... 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 in life, specifically, his childhood, marriage, and participation in war. The dark humored novel stresses the point that given the ... ability to harness free will, i.e. control his destiny, man, being an egocentric creature, finds it an impossible task. This is seen through Billy's lack of resolve when faced with the pr...

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

... February of 1945, the greatest man-caused massacre in history. The novel is about the life and times of a World War 2 veteran named Billy Pilgrim. In Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut uses structure and point of view to portray the theme that time is relative. The way Kurt Vonnegut ... no chronological order. This mirrors the structure of the novel, which has a beginning, middle, and end, but not in their respective places. (Dawley 1) Billy states numerous times in the novel that he has becomeunstuck in time? and that the time travel periodsaren't necessarily fun?. (Vonnegut 23) While t...

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

... fear of. There is an expression that appears several times, `so it goes', that becomes visible after death is mentioned, which is something Tralfamadorians tough Billy when he was kidnapped by a flying saucer (" When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in a bad ... . What made the Dresden bombing even more horrible to him was that as a prisoner, he was ironically protected from the bombs and fire. Billy's being always bemused, utterly helpless, even ridiculous, fits him for the role of an innocent man in a cruel world. The innocence of those ... who...

• Word Count: 1047
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... a much greater meaning and message behind it. "So it goes" 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 ... silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist" (26,27). The fact that Billy looks at death this way helps explain why he is so numb to death. Vonnegut wants to show that war is not glorious a...

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

... me." (148). He purposely points out that he says these things to humanize the storyline. For example, he tells the reader that a specific event would make a good epitaph for Billy Pilgrim. Then he effortlessly inserts that it would be a good epitaph for himself as well. A couple pages after the epitaph, Vonnegut informs the reader that he was in the prisoner ... a real living and breathing person, even if it sounds incredibly ridiculous. Another "rule" of writing Vonnegut breaks in this novel is inserting more than one surrogate for himself. Billy Pilgrim is the main and obvious surroga...

• Word Count: 990
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

... 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 important places are Germany during world war two; Ilium, New York, before and after the war; and an alien planet called Tralfamadore ... . Ilium, New York is the fictional town in New York where Billy Pilgrim is born in 1922 and where he lives most of his life. In Chapter 1, Vonnegut tells us that after the war he and his wife ... mirrors the narrators the most. Vonnegut having experienced war and...

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

... in the basement of Slaughterhouse Five during the bombing and manage to escape unharmed. Another important setting in the book is the planet of Tralfamadore, where Billy is taken by aliens. There he is held captive and displayed in a zoo, along with his earthling mate, Montana Wildhack, an american star of pornographic ... about himself, the story, and how he wrote it. Vonnegut actually appears as a character in some of the war scenes. The protagonist of the novel is Billy Pilgrim, a mild man. Even though he becomes a successful optometrist, gets married to Valencia, and has two children...

• Word Count: 803
• Approx Pages: 3
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

... we go throughout life chronologically, he slips in and out of periods of his life, in and out of time and lives in that moment. One time Billy was abducted by aliens called Trafamadorians. These aliens experience life in the 4th dimension, time. "A Trafamadorian sees all time as you might see a stretch ... is important and defines the person's character. This book is written very much in a Trafamadorian style. It does not focus on the entire life of Billy Pilgrim, but instead focuses on certain moments of his life. When humans look at another's life, they do not focus on death but on how...

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

... my favorite character in the story because everything abnormal happened to him yet he seemed so innocent. Billy was truly my favorite character when I found out the clothes he was wearing were an "azure toga and silver shoes". Billy had some of the worst stuff happen to him but he survived and moved on. The character that I disliked the most was Paul ... who whoever he has a scuffle with he later punishes. My favorite part of the story was when Billy was on Tralfamadore. Billy seemed to be in charge there and he had a beautiful mate. All the Tralfamadorians viewed Billy as a great creat...

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

... which would prevent the flow of time. This "prevention of time flow" is obviously something that fascinates him, because the main character in the novel, Billy Pilgrim, is untouched by time flow. He is "spastic in time," and has the ability to time travel. He also travels to another world, ... Tralfamadore, which gives him a whole new concept of time and the cycle of life. Billy uses the Tralfamadorian philosophy in order to "escape from the concept of linear time, just as their novels are an escape from linear narration- (McGinnis ... manner. Slaughterhouse-Five is a random collection o...

• Word Count: 781
• Approx Pages: 3

... and also religion is ridiculous and tries to control your life in the name of God whose existence is doubtful. The sarcasm and careless for things that Billy Pilgrim shows in Slaughterhouse-Five reflects Vonnegut's careless for everything since human is innocent. What could be important in a world controlled by naive humans who live ... fear or saw them as cruel as they maybe were, they were simply enemies that he did not even hated. He even was concentrated in other details: "Billy looked up at the face that went with the clogs. It was the face of a blond angel, of a fifteen-year-old b...

• Word Count: 627
• Approx Pages: 3

... In the book he serves as the narrator, observing, not only the calamities of those who held the status of prisoners of war, but the life of Billy Pilgrim in particular. Pilgrim's life is hard to keep up with, for in it are many journeys. Through these journeys he deals with issues of free-will ... finds himself unable to control. For instance, when he was a child, Pilgrim's father tossed him into the deep end of the pool. Billy decided he would prefer to just stay there, but he was rescued nonetheless. He was later drafted into the war against his will ... and future. While there are man...

• Word Count: 828
• Approx Pages: 3
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

... 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 chaplain, Pilgrim's intentions weren't to fight, but to serve the moral and spiritual needs of the soldiers. As he ... throughout the novel, Vonnegut makes mention of the American bombing of Dresden, Germany, in which over one hundred thousand innocent Germans were slain. Also, the psychological and physical da...

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

... to love one another. To find the war's contrast with love is quite difficult, because the book doesn't talk about any couple that was cruelly torn apart by the war (Billy didn't seem to love his wife very much, for example.) Vonnegut expresses it very lightly, uses the word "love" very rarely, yet effectively. He tries to look for love and ... beauty in things that seemingly are neither lovely nor beautiful. For example, when Billy was captured by the group of Germans, he didn't see them as a cruel enemy, but as normal, innocent people. In conclusion, I feel my favorite was Harrison Ber...

• Word Count: 750
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School