... of these sexes are only active in the fourth dimension, Billy cannot perceive them. When Billy praises the peacefulness of Tralfamadore, the aliens inform him that Tralfamadorians are at war sometimes and at peace at others. They also know how the universe will end: one of their pilots will accidentally blow it up. It always happens the same way and that is ... huddle together, and the changing expressions on their faces "silent mouths open in awe and terror "seem to Billy like a silent film of a barbershop quartet. Billy time-travels to Tralfamadore, where Montana Wildhack, who is six-...

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

... that the book we are about to read is true, more or less. The parts dealing with World War II are most closely associated with actual events. Twenty-three years have passed since the end of the war, and for much of that time the narrator has been trying to write about the bombing of ... Dresden. He was never able to write the ... own mind, Weary narrates the war stories he will one day tell. Although he is almost as clumsy and slow as Billy, he imagines himself and the two scouts as fast friends. In his head he refers to them and himself as the Three Musketeers, and tells himself the sto...

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

... . Enter the sinister criminal Paul Lazzaro. Paul has a revenge-complex, and takes on the task of avenging Roland's death, informing Billy of his impending doom. Billy, true to character, doesn't respond. The soldiers are then marched to Dresden, where they take up work in Schlachthof-funf i.e. Slaughter House Five. While there, during the night, Dresden, a city in Germany, is bombed and 130,000 ... life. Not much is written about the remainder of his life. He survives a plane crash, meets his idol Kilgore Trout, loses his wife to carbon monoxide poisoning, and spends his days as a senile...

• Word Count: 1541
• Approx Pages: 6
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

... . Enter the sinister criminal Paul Lazzaro. Paul has a revenge-complex, and takes on the task of avenging Roland's death, informing Billy of his impending doom. Billy, true to character, doesn't respond. The soldiers are then marched to Dresden, where they take up work in Schlachthof-funf i.e. Slaughter House Five. While there, during the night, Dresden, a city in Germany, is bombed and 130,000 ... life. Not much is written about the remainder of his life. He survives a plane crash, meets his idol Kilgore Trout, loses his wife to carbon monoxide poisoning, and spends his days as a senile...

• Word Count: 1646
• Approx Pages: 7
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

... . Enter the sinister criminal Paul Lazzaro. Paul has a revenge-complex, and takes on the task of avenging Roland's death, informing Billy of his impending doom. Billy, true to character, doesn't respond. The soldiers are then marched to Dresden, where they take up work in Schlachthof-funf i.e. Slaughter House Five. While there, during the night, Dresden, a city in Germany, is bombed and 130,000 ... life. Not much is written about the remainder of his life. He survives a plane crash, meets his idol Kilgore Trout, loses his wife to carbon monoxide poisoning, and spends his days as a senile...

• Word Count: 1646
• Approx Pages: 7
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

... an anti-war novel about the bombings of Dresden in World War II, Slaughterhouse-Five is a fictional story written by Kurt Vonnegut to create the sense of what it may have been like to actually witness this horrible feat.. With an almost autobiographical character, Vonnegut tells the tale that he so desperately wanted to tell to the American ... is writing this book and tells of the actual bombing of Dresden from his real point-of-view. The second chapter starts the fictional story Vonnegut stirs up to tell of the bombing without using a non-fiction, first person point-of-view. A critical...

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

... Vonnegut places himself inside the book, particularly in the first chapter, the reader is told that the all the events of the story are true, more or less, and that Vonnegut experienced the Dresden bombings firsthand. This book was written to be an antiwar narrative. There are dozens of incidents and quotations throughout the book that make it very clear, very quickly, what ... . He tells us about how the cattle have awakened Jesus, yet he does not cry about it. He simply ignores it. Vonnegut uses dark irony in a very effective way, which not only disturbs the reader, but connects variou...

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

... writer who, in this case, is working on a book called "The Day the World Ended", about the bombing of Hiroshima. Vonnegut used this novel to tell, in a creative way, the details of his own life during this time. Some of Vonnegut's short stories reflected on his life as a young adult ... commercials. One particular commercial was the "Dicover Card" commercial in 1996. When the producer was asked how Vonnegut responded to such a request, he replied, "I had to offer him a whack of cash." This was true because Vonnegut does not generally support the consumer culture. He made this very clear ...

• Word Count: 1839
• Approx Pages: 7
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

... . Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else." This is a short, but powerful excerpt from the short story Harrison Bergeron. Not only does it make you wonder why everyone is equal, but as well makes you wonder how did everyone become equal? In the short story and the movie, Kurt Vonnegut presents a scary view of human society in the United States in the ... . Disparity descend upon the movie and Harrison is stopped and urged to tell the people of the country that it was all a hoax, in order to preserve order. He does this but, in perfect irony, commits suicide on live television to ...

• Word Count: 1205
• Approx Pages: 5

... , Kurt Vonnegut really shows his human side and even goes out to prove how he is human. Then the Tralfamadorians teach us how to feel no unhappiness. They teach Billy, more importantly, to move on from troubles in his life, but since Billy is human, this concept, to him, brings challenge. First, let us take a look at ... to chapter one, we hear Vonnegut tell us about his father's death. As a human he is one to mourn it and not shrug it off. He does not say "so it goes" like Billy does throughout the novel, but reacts differently. "Shortly before my father died, he said to me, 'You k...

• Word Count: 1347
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: High School

... as Socrates and Vonnegut have stressed that responsibility for one's actions is the first step toward understanding why things are the way they are (i.e. war, hunger, injustice, etc.) As Socrates states, "Would that the majority could inflict the greatest evils, for they would then be capable of ... see the mentality scientists such as Breed operate under, "Felix died shortly after that! And, if youd been listening to what Ive been trying to tell you about pure research men, you wouldnt ask such a question! Pure research men work on what fascinates them, not on what ... conscience is m...

• Word Count: 2901
• Approx Pages: 12
• Grade Level: Undergraduate