LITERATURE ANALYSIS #2

Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut

1. This book is told from the third person point of view although the first chapter is first person. The book doesn't have a chronologically correct sequence of events so it is mostly just a collection of memories. The book resembles the structure of Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. Billy is a war veteran who has a mental condition where he will have a breakdown if he is reminded of his days at war. The story begins as Billy describes how he has tried to write a book about his experiences in Dresden but just couldn't piece it all together. Billy studied to be an optometrist when he got out of the war and married a woman named Valencia Merble. Billy's mental breakdowns were "treated for" in a mental hospital. Years go by and they have kids and get wealthy. This is where the story gets weird. Billy talks about these aliens that captured him and how they see things in four dimensions and time is perceived differently by them. He is studied by the aliens.
2. The theme of the story was how war can destroy physical things as well as nonphysical things. Like how Billy has a mental breakdown whenever he gets deja vu from some certain war event.
3. The author's tone was very matter-of-fact and sarcastic. "O'Hare remembered one guy who got into a lot of wine in Dresden, before it was bombed, and we had to take him home in a wheelbarrow. It wasn't much to write a book about." "He was sentenced to six months in prison. He died there of pneumonia. So it goes." "A lot of people were being wounded or killed. So it goes."
4. Literary devices

• Amplification- "It is an atomic bomb. It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe. The force from which the sun draws its power has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far East." p.82
• Allegory- the war was an allegory to the hardships of life and fear a man must live wit his whole life.
• Anecdote- "O'Hare remembered one guy who got into a lot of wine in Dresden, before it was bombed, and we had to take him home in a wheelbarrow."
• Foreshadowing- "This one is a failure, and had to be, since it was written by a pillar of salt. It begins like this: Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time. It ends like this: Poo-tee-weet?"
• Personification- "During the night, some of the locomotives began to tootle to one another, and then to move."

1. Characters are described with indirect characterization: "Billy Pilgrim went on skating, doing tricks in sweat-socks, tricks that most people would consider impossible-making turns, stopping on a dime and so on." and direct characterization: "Roland Weary was only eighteen, was at the end of an unhappy childhood spent mostly in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He had been unpopular in Pittsburgh. He had been unpopular because he was stupid and fat and mean, and smelled like bacon no matter how much he washed. He was always being ditched in Pittsburgh by people who did not want him with them."
2. Vonnegut uses consistent syntax and diction throughout the book. He insults characters in a very dry and nonchalant way.
3. Billy is a static character. He stays as his typical everyday guy character throughout the book and doesn't change much.
4. By the end of the book I didn't really feel like I had met an actual person because I never really saw things through Billy's eyes. Everything was just described to me and I didn't connect with him at all.