Book Review: Slaughterhouse-Five

"It is so short and jumbled and jangled, Sam, because there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want anything ever again. Everything is supposed to be very quiet after a massacre, and it always is, except for the birds. And what do the birds say? All there is to say about a massacre, things like 'Poo-tee-weet?'"
From Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

"'You know — we've had to imagine the war here, and we have imagined that it was being fought by aging men like ourselves. We had forgotten that wars were fought by babies. When I saw those freshly shaved faces, it was a shock. 'My God, my God — ' I said to myself, 'It's the Children's Crusade.'"
From Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

"There was a still life on Billy's bedside table-two pills, an ashtray with three lipstick-stained cigarettes in it, one cigarette still burning, and a glass of water. The water was dead. So it goes. Air was trying to get out of the dead water. Bubbles were clinging to the walls of the glass, too weak to climb out."
From Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

Please forgive my excess of quotes. I couldn't help myself. It was the effect of the book on my brain that made me not want to have to choose just one quote to use.

Slaughterhouse-Five or The Children's Crusade: A Duty -Dance with Death 

by Kurt Vonnegut

Course: Seven Basic Plots

Description: Considered to be one of the world's great anti-war books. Centering on the infamous fire-bombing of Dresden, Billy Pilgrim's odyssey through time reflects the mythic journey of our own fractured lives as we search for meaning in what we are afraid to know.

Type of Literature: Post-Modern Realism/Sci-Fi 

(Yes, feel free to be confused by that)

Why I Like It: First let me say two things:

1. This is a post-modern novel and I hate post-modern novels.
2. This is an anti-war book and I hate books about war, especially of the anti-type.

Those things being said, this book moved me. It isn't clean (there is swearing and references to sex and killing and cruelty) but war and the effect of war on people aren't clean. I mean, some of the things that characters say and do are downright offensive and inappropriate. There isn't a continuous plot line – Billy Pilgrim literally time jumps to different points in his life – and the only climax that may be claimed is the bombing of Dresden. Even that isn't really part of a traditional plot arch. Yet there is something so beautiful and intense about the shambles of Billy’s life, the moments and the manner in which they were described, that really impacted me. I think, in the end, what makes this such a great novel is that the characters in it aren't heroes or villains, but scarred and lost people trying to make sense of the senseless and finding themselves unable. It is funny and sad at the same time but I never laughed or cried during its reading.