Slaughterhouse-5

By Kurt Vonnegut

Listening to this as an audiobook, I was at first very confused, and unsure if I was listening to a legitimate version of the story. In Slaughterhouse-5, Vonnegut tells the story of Billy, an American who lived through World War II and the bombing of Dresden. The confusing part for me, at first, is that Billy has a head injury, and now memories and experiences are one in the same to him. It's hard to tell what is when, when is what, and if any of it is actually real. But this form of storytelling is only a medium for Vonnegut to relay his thoughts on WW2: the horrifying conditions, the meaninglessness of it all, and sometimes his opinions on Americans. Having served in the war, Vonnegut knows firsthand the atrocities that took place, and if his goal was to write an antiwar book - geez, he was successful.

As Billy was such an inept soldier, the perspective we get is from a loser: a captive American, disliked and shunned by everyone, too weak (and dumb) to stand up for himself. He gets the worst sleeping locations, gear, and clothing. Frostbite is always just around the corner, and starvation is right behind his back. These are true for most of the captive soldiers we see, but especially for Billy. One interesting thing Vonnegut claims is that Americans were the only nation to hate themselves - in any other nation's army, there was a harshness but only for the sake of success and survival; in the American army, your superiors hated you and you hated them too. And once in prison, you would do anything for survival, even if it meant harming your fellow countryman. I don't know how true this is, but there was a long and passionate monologue about the wickedness and stupidity of America, so I thought it worth noting. 

Billy, and Vonnegut, were also at the bombing of Dresden. We get to see the total destruction of a city, citizens included, and when Billy and some other prisoners escape afterwards they are shot at by American planes. The goal of Dresden, it seems, was to annihilate anything and anyone in the city. This may make me seem "uneducated", but I hadn't really heard of the bombing of Dresden before. The name sounded familiar, but to read about the atrocity committed there and see some of the numbers (like death toll) Vonnegut writes was astonishing. I couldn't believe this wasn't taught in any of my history courses where we've learned about WW2.

Another prevailing antiwar sentiment in Slaughterhouse-5 is that the soldiers were just "babies". 18 or 19 year old kids, being sent overseas to kill other babies or to die trying. This can be applied to any other war in the history of the world, and makes me sick. Children are used to fight wars that they don't even understand. I'm all for a good argument against war and violence, and Slaughterhouse-5  is as convincing as any. (3/18/21)