Slaughterhouse-Five, Or The Children's Crusade- A Duty-Dance With Death by Kurt Vonnegut
Product Details
Web ID: 15623609Life altering book!
In the past 2 years I have probably listened to this book over 12 times and read it about 5. The first Vonnegut book I've read (have a couple more on my shelf) the way he writes about time and death is brilliant. Even after nearly 20 readings and listenings, it still gets better every time and I catch little things I missed. The one I listen to is narrated by Ethan Hawke and he does an incredible job!
Recommends this product
Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Aliens and WWII?
This book is a well-done work that showcases what it was like to be a soldier in World War II and a veteran in the post-war period of America. Kurt Vonnegut's masterful use of language really helped me get a feel for the characters. His writing style worked really well with the event-focused plot that moves around because each description was short and sweet. The "meta" first section of his book where it is written in the first person as Vonnegut accomplishes the goal of getting the reader invested by setting up the truth behind the war and talking about its alternative title: 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘊𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥𝘳𝘦𝘯'𝘴 𝘊𝘳𝘶𝘴𝘢𝘥𝘦: 𝘈 𝘋𝘶𝘵𝘺-𝘋𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘋𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘩. Then he goes into the action, setting up a third-person, semi-autobiographical fiction story. He uses many different tools in his stories to show different experiences that happened during the war. He uses characters to show general things that people in the war were like and what they thought of. His everyman hero, Billy Pilgrim, lacks an illustrious job, life, or glorified role in the military but is just dragged on through life just like the rest of us. Montana Wildhack is an illustration of the lust and dissatisfaction with their wives that millitary men have in their own lives. The Tralfamadorians are another aspect that makes me enjoy the book. The fact that such a well-received, famous book would include stories with aliens. This also helps to break up the harshness and the "edge" that this book has due to the heavy subject matter of the War and the suffering and death it caused. His portrayal of the aliens as freaky little stoics makes me enjoy the book more by giving me something to laugh at the absurdness of to the point that the lines between the absurdism of the novel and the reality of the novel become blurred. Their succinct philosophy of "so it goes," helps to show Billy's attempts to cope with what the war has left him. With my own thoughts on the unchangeability of fate and just general pessimism helped me find some common ground with Pilgrim and be able to see the problems with that state of thinking. Because of this it has helped me reexamine my life and have an outside view one the very common view on the world in the form of pessimism. Overall, I enjoyed this book very much. Vonnegut's experience as a veteran really helps form this book and make it such a good book for you to read. Even though it may seem like I wrote a lot, I left out so much of what makes the book great. So, if an extremely thoughtful and well-written antiwar book with aliens sounds right up your alley, then this would be a great novel for you!
Recommends this product
Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Great book
Its a little bit more complex but its a good starter to get into more complicated/ harder to understand books and it has an interesting and weird plot .
Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Everything Was Beautiful
This is a classic for a reason. Both beautiful and horrifying, it's poetry in a novel.
Recommends this product
Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Nothing Like You've Ever Read Before
Consider this novel one that was slaughtered (see what I did there?) by high school curriculums nationwide. Don't let your tenth grade language arts teacher's boring rendition of an antiwar lecture deter you from reading this. It's epic. Kurt Vonnegut is epic. This is not your standard, everyday antiwar novel. There are ALIENS in this book. Actual real, live, breathing, alien-looking-in-all-their-alien-glory aliens! There are all sorts of wonderful, yet haunting imaginations that Vonnegut puts into this work that depicts the effects of wartime and loss with an incredibly unique and honest perspective. There was not a single moment of reading this novel that was boring or unexciting. It was riveting the whole entire time. Part of this is thanks to the events that occur. Most of this is thanks to Vonnegut's mystifying writing. He drags you in to a point that you wouldn't even consider letting go.
Recommends this product
Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
So It Goes
The book ‘Slaughterhouse-Five’ by Kurt Vonnegut blew my mind away because it negated and dismantled everything that I thought would make up an excellent novel but it is still the best novel I have ever read. It has no obvious structure but manages, still manages, to make it flow so well. The reason this structure works so well is that it shows that after a war, a soldier’s life is in ruins and with no clear purpose, which is the case with Billy Pilgrim, the hero of the story. Billy Pilgrim is a soldier who would witness the bombing of Dresden and is in a state of confusion because he doesn’t understand why people have to destroy so much. After the war, Billy claims that he has been kidnapped by aliens from Planet Tralfamadore. Kurt Voggnut leaves it up to us whether to believe if Billy was, in reality, kidnapped by aliens or not. If Billy was kidnapped by a bunch of aliens from Planet Tralfmadore then this book would be a science fiction novel, but if not, I could say that this is an example of Billy’s coping strategies to help him recover from the war. Billy then starts to spread the beliefs of Tralfamadore which exclaims that our life has already been established and that all we can do is accept it and move on to help us understand that we cannot change anything. I do highly recommend this book, but I will warn you, that this is probably the most bizarre book you will ever read but bear with it because by the end you will understand why this book is the most iconic and powerful statement against war ever written.
Recommends this product
Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
A Modern Classic
I selected the book Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut to read for my sophomore English class. This is a science fiction novel published in 1969. It is a semiautobiographical account of the firebombing in Dresden, Germany in 1945. The book digs into the controversy of this event that occurred so late in the war. Vonnegut uses science fiction combined with historical facts from his experience as a prisoner of war in this war antiwar novel that has become a modern classic. Billy Pilgrim is the main character of this story. When Billy was studying to be an optometrist he was drafted into World War II. At the Battle of the Bulge he meets Roland wear, a soldier that ends up saving Billy’s life many times. The two of them are captured. Weary dies of gangrene and Billy is sent to Dresden. In Dresden, Billy and other prisoners are kept in a slaughterhouse. Billy manages to survive the firebombing at Dresden and later returns to the United States. Billy suffers a nervous breakdown when he returns to the United States. Once he recovers he becomes a successful optometrist and gets married. He also has two children. Several years later after his daughter’s wedding, Billy is kidnapped by aliens and taken to the planet Tralfamadore where he is exhibited in a zoo. The concept of time on this planet is very different and it is possible to travel to any moment of the past, present future. It is during this time that Billy falls in love with another kidnapped woman and they have a child together. Back on earth, Billy preaches about the philosophy of the Tralfamaorians. They believe they know the future of all things as well as the end of the universe. They believe in fate and use the phrase “so it goes”. Billy spreads these beliefs to many followers until one day he is killed by an assassin believed to be hired by a soldier that overheard Roland Weary blaming Billy for his death. Because of Billy’s beliefs, he is not scared because he knows when he will die and he knows he can travel to the past to an earlier time. Because of the time travel, it’s as if the war never really ends and Billy keeps reliving the horrible experience of it. I found myself starting and stopping this book a few times in the beginning. When I finally picked it up again I promised myself I would keep reading until I finished the book. I am glad that I did. While at times the book was hard to follow because it jumped back and forth so much, I found it to be really interesting and it was disturbing, funny, weird, cruel, and beautiful all at the same time. I think that it is a book that can be revisited and read more than once. Each time you can gain something new from the story. I think that Slaughter House Five is a must-read. Do not expect the book to be enjoyable or pleasant to read, but the book will hit you hard and make you feel. Vonnegut is a brilliant writer and this really is a modern classic.
Recommends this product
Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
S5 Got Me To Start Reading Again
I have not read recreationally for a long time now, but I was recommended Slaughterhouse-Five twice in such a short span of time, and from two so very unexpected sources that I figured I had to give it a shot. I was not disappointed and I'm glad that I picked this up! I am looking forward to finding more books that I am interested to read, and I'm certain that some of those will come from Vonnegut. The interesting ways in which he inserted humor into such a dark story were always unnexpected, and I'm excited to read other stories from his perspective.
Recommends this product
Customer review from barnesandnoble.com