Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

››› Get audio book for free. ‹‹‹ Original Title: Slaughterhouse-Five ISBN: 0099800209 ISBN13: 9780099800200 Autor: Kurt Vonnegut Rating: 4 of 5 stars (3877) counts Original Format: Paperback, 177 pages Download Format: PDF, FB2, MOBI, MP3. Published: 2000 / by Vintage Classics / (first published March 1969) Language: English Genre(s): Fiction- 8,628 users Classics- 7,188 users Science Fiction- 3,742 users War- 1,314 users

Description: Prisoner of war, optometrist, time-traveller - these are the life roles of Billy Pilgrim, hero of this miraculously moving, bitter and funny story of innocence faced with apocalypse. Slaughterhouse 5 is one of the world's great anti-war books. Centring on the infamous fire-bombing of Dresden in the Second World War, Billy Pilgrim's odyssey through time reflects the journey of our own fractured lives as we search for meaning in what we are afraid to know.

About Author:

Kurt Vonnegut, Junior was an American novelist, satirist, and most recently, graphic artist. He was recognized as New York State Author for 2001-2003. He was born in Indianapolis, later the setting for many of his novels. He attended Cornell University from 1941 to 1943, where he wrote a column for the student newspaper, the Cornell Daily Sun. Vonnegut trained as a chemist and worked as a journalist before joining the U.S. Army and serving in World War II. After the war, he attended University of Chicago as a graduate student in anthropology and also worked as a police reporter at the City News Bureau of Chicago. He left Chicago to work in Schenectady, New York in public relations for General Electric. He attributed his unadorned writing style to his reporting work. His experiences as an advance scout in the Battle of the Bulge, and in particular his witnessing of the bombing of Dresden, Germany whilst a prisoner of war, would inform much of his work. This event would also form the core of his most famous work, Slaughterhouse-Five, the book which would make him a millionaire. This acerbic 200-page book is what most people mean when they describe a work as "Vonnegutian" in scope. Vonnegut was a self-proclaimed humanist and socialist (influenced by the style of Indiana's own Eugene V. Debs) and a lifelong supporter of the American Civil Liberties Union. The novelist is known for works blending satire, black comedy and science fiction, such as

Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), Cat's Cradle (1963), and Breakfast of Champions (1973)

Other Editions:

- Slaughterhouse-Five (Paperback)

- Slaughterhouse-Five (Mass Market Paperback)

- Slaughterhouse-Five (Kindle Edition)

- Slaughterhouse-Five (Kindle Edition)

- Slaughterhouse-Five (Kindle Edition)

Books By Author:

- Cat's Cradle

- Breakfast of Champions

- The Sirens of Titan

- Mother Night

- Galápagos

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Rewiews:

Sep 03, 2016 Simeon Rated it: it was amazing Shelves: sci-fi, literature, classic, apocalypse There are some terrible reviews of SH5 floating around Goodreads, but one particularly awful sentiment is that Slaughterhouse-Five isn't anti-war. This is usually based on the following quote. "It had to be done," Rumfoord told Billy, speaking of the destruction of Dresden. "I know," said Billy. "That's war." "I know. I'm not complaining"

"It must have been hell on the ground." "It was," said Billy Pilgrim. "Pity the men who had to do it." "I do." "You must have had mixed feelings, there on the ground." " There are some terrible reviews of SH5 floating around Goodreads, but one particularly awful sentiment is that Slaughterhouse-Five isn't anti-war. This is usually based on the following quote. "It had to be done," Rumfoord told Billy, speaking of the destruction of Dresden. "I know," said Billy. "That's war." "I know. I'm not complaining" "It must have been hell on the ground." "It was," said Billy Pilgrim. "Pity the men who had to do it." "I do." "You must have had mixed feelings, there on the ground." "It was all right," said Billy. "Everything is all right, and everybody has to do exactly what he does. I learned that on Tralfamadore."For context, Mr. Rumfoord is an old military historian described as "hateful and cruel" who wants to see weaklings like Billy exterminated. On Tralfamadore, Billy was introduced to the revelation that all things happen exactly as they do, and that they will always happen that way, and that they will never happen any other way. Meaning, time is all at once. The aliens, incidentally, admit to destroying the universe in a comical accident fated far into the future, and they're very sorry, but so it goes. <- passive acceptance The entire story up to this point has been about Billy, buffeted like a powerless pathetic leaf in a storm, pushed this way and that by forces entirely outside his tiny purview. He lays catatonically in a hospital bed after the plane crash and the death of his wife, and all the time traveling back and forth from Dresden where toddlers and families and old grannies and anti-war civilians were burned alive in a carefully organized inferno (so it goes), and Billy is about ready to agree to absolutely anything. It can't be prevented. It can't be helped. You're powerless, after a while. What hope have we, or anyone caught in the middle of a war, or even the poor soldiers who are nothing but pawns and children (hence the children's crusade), to influence these gigantic, global events? Therefore, Billy agrees with the hateful, the cruel Mr. Rumfoord, who is revising his military history of WWII, having previously forgotten to mention the Dresden bombing, which cost twice as many innocent lives as the nuking of Hiroshima. Women and children, not evaporated instantly, but melted slowly by chemicals and liquid flame, their leftovers, according to Billy, lying in the street like blackened logs, or in piles of families who died together in their little homes. Incidentally, how can anything be pro-war or anti-war? Because being anti-war is a bit like being anti-conflict, anti-death, and anti-suffering. Is there a book that's pro these things? Is there a book

that touches on the subject of war and is not against it? We don't support wars, though we are sometimes forced to accept them. Anyone who thinks that the bombing of Dresden was necessary is delusional. It's like saying, "yo, look how they bombed these innocents - that shit was wrong! Let's go bomb some innocents, too." That's the sad truth of it. 418 likes 20 comments

Gilkesl Everything Vonnegut writes is satire.

Apr 22, 2016 02:28PM

Marsh Bloom Rumfoord's comments seemed clearly defensive on his part. And Billy just does his "so it goes" in different wording in response.

Jan 17, 2017 01:56AM