Josh On Design

I don't know why I waited until I was almost fifty to read Slaughterhouse Five. I'd always heard it was a groundbreaking work of sci-fi, but I didn't know why. Now that I've read it I can say that it's not really sci-fi, but it certainly is groundbreaking.

If you haven't read it, Slaughterhouse Five is a sci-fi (ish) novel by Kurt Vonnegut about the bombing of Dresden in WWII. It tells the story of Billy Pilgrim, an American soldier who becomes "un-stuck in time", traveling between his time as a POW in Germany to his childhood, his middle age, and his abduction by aliens to an interstellar zoo. Written in a darkly humorous and sarcastic style, on the surface it almost seems to be making light of the death and destruction of the war and its effect on Billy. So it goes.

Before I go any further you need to know that this novel was released in 1969, and Vonnegut himself was a POW in Germany during the bombing of Dresden. Slaughterhouse Five is an extremely anti-war novel. It is as much about the Vietnam War (which was very much active during the writing) as about his experiences in WWII. The point of the novel is that war is insane, and the only rational response to war is to become insane yourself. The sarcastic style reflects the mental state of a man broken by war. The only way to survive is to go crazy.

The sci-fi angle is really just a literary device. Is Billy actually traveling through time? Was he actually kept in an interstellar zoo and forced to breed with an attractive film star? Or are these all figments of his broken mind inspired by a visit to a dirty bookshop? The point of the story is that it doesn't matter. In the insanity of war either are equally valid explanations.

Is it worth reading today? Absolutely. War is just as insane as it's always been. It's a classic that keeps getting banned in schools for the very good reason that people are afraid our youth might understand it.

I also appreciate that it's a slender 200 pages. I'm sick of novels that are tomes.