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Summary: Slau/hou/ter/gh/se ve/Fi (Slaughterhouse Five)
Review: Slaughterhouse Five is one of the most interesting books I have ever read. With this incredible book, Kurt Vonnegut broke the rules of the traditional novel. He wrote it in such a way that the reader is hurled through time both forward and backward. The protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, has a strange affliction. He often loses consciousness only to come to in another time in his life. This ability gives the book a very circular timeline as opposed to the more traditional linear format. Slaughterhouse Five is an anti-war book. Vonnegut showed the insignificance of a single life in wartime by adding the phrase "So it goes." after every death in the book. The book does have a positive outlook on death however, which Billy learns through his encounters with the Tralfmadorians, an alien race which for whatever reason is interested in him. Slaughterhouse Five is unfortunately a bit dry in some parts, but the attentive reader can draw out some very positive messages from the story. The characters in the book lack depth, which allows them to be more expendable. This can either be good or bad. Their expendability can once again prove the insignificance of human life, or their lack of depth may just fail to capture the reader's attention. I would recommend Slaughterhouse Five to anyone that is bored with the average novel. I think you will be pleased with this interesting novel.
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Summary: One Of The Great Modern Novels
Review: Kurt Vonnegut is one of the best and most original writers of the last fifty years. Slaughterhouse Five is Vonnegut's masterpiece. One note of advice. If you are a person who always reads the first page of a book before buying it, which often works, make sure that you read the first page of chapter two. Chapter one is an introduction tot he story, and although it is good, it doesn't hold a candle to the rest of the book. There are an infinite amount of discussions that this book can raise. Is Billy Pilgrim a Christ Figure? Is this an Anti War/Glacier book? Does Time exist? True, this book is very deep, especially if you analyis it exstenseively. The book, however, is extremely enjoyable. It is a short book and fairly easy to read. Do your self a favor and read this book. You might not like it, I admit it is not for everyone, but it has the potential of changing your way of thinking. In a good way.
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Summary: AMAZING
Review: It is very rarely that I read a book, even one this short, from cover to cover without pausing. It really blows my mind that people from TN and high school students did not enjoy this book.
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Summary: An interesting novel of life and war.
Review: Billy Pilgrim is unstuck in time. He can flip around randomly throughout his life whereever he wants to go. He serves as a chaplain's assistant in World War II, is captured by Germans, survives the largest massacre in European history, the fire bombing of dresden. It's so ironically funny at times. It was interesting, finding out how billy came up with his delusions.
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Summary: Possibly his finest work.
Review: This is fantastic! I first read this in a library when I was in college. Vonnegut is absolutely brilliant, and stands alone in his field as arguably the finest satirist in the world. I found myself laughing out loud on several occasions. This is great stuff. I read Vonnegut regularly and love it every time. Naturally, its a little depressing... but brilliant nonetheless.
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Summary: Interesting but ODD
Review: This book contains some very interesting thoughts and social commentaries on war, but the timeline, though interesting, skips around too much for my liking. I would reccomend this book to those interested in a thought provoking read, but not to those who have trouble understanding complex plots and metaphorical themes.
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Summary: At the risk of being IMMENSELY unpopular...
Review: I would describe this as the worst book of Vonnegut's career.Want a coherent plot? this is not the book for you. Characters whose actions make a degree of sense? Nope. Excellent examples of Vonnegut's biting wit? Not really. Seeing a trend? Slaughterhouse 5, while almost univerally hailed as Vonnegut's best work, is utterly bad. I do not know if Vonnegut was attempting to be an absurdist (if so, he didn't succeed) or whether it was merely a cathartic exercise for taking away his pain from the horrific events he witnessed in the Second World War. Whatever the excuse, it was not ever and is not now a good book. When I first read this book, I stopped reading Vonnegut for well over a year. I could hardly believe that the man who created such well crafted short fiction as "Harrison Bergeron" and such witty novels as Slapstick could do something this incredibly without redeeming value. Its protagonist is an anti-hero of the first rate, yet the reader is expected to sympathize with him. If Billy Pilgrim was intended as another alter-ego of Vonnegut himself, I do not think I would ever want to meet the writer in person, as he would be a let down to his own other works.
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Summary: Listen:
Review: Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse-Five" is a curiosity. It concerns a man named Billy Pilgrim who becomes "unstuck in time," meaning he involuntarily travels back and forth between various episodes in his lifetime, something like temporal schizophrenia. The conventional notion of time is disregarded in this book, so our familiar structure of past, present, and future is in discord with the chronology of the events. As a young man, Billy serves in World War II as a chaplain's assistant. He ends up behind enemy lines with a morbid creep named Roland Weary who educates him about the sickest torture methods known to man. They're captured by German soldiers and taken to a prison camp where Billy is stalked by another creep named Paul Lazzaro. Soon Billy and the other prisoners are shipped into Dresden to be laborers, and for living quarters they are put into an old slaughterhouse marked with the number five. A visiting American-turned-Nazi dignitary attempts to proselytize them just before they are forced to cower in an underground meat locker while Allied aircraft bomb and decimate the city. After the war, Billy becomes an optometrist, marries, raises a family, and lives every semblance of a normal life except, of course, for the time travel. His imagination is fueled by the science fiction novels of a writer named Kilgore Trout, who is no stranger to the concept of time travel. Later, Billy is kidnapped by aliens from a planet called Tralfamadore and exhibited in a zoo on their planet, in an Earthling-accommodating habitat furnished by merchandise the aliens stole from a Sears warehouse in Iowa City. The Tralfamadorians have also kidnapped an Earthling woman, a movie star named Montana Wildhack, to provide Billy with a mate. Keep in mind that these events are not related in chronological order, but rather are intertwined with each other as Billy zaps back and forth between milieus. It's difficult to decipher all of this, but Vonnegut makes it clear in the first chapter that this is an anti-war novel, comparing the Children's Crusade of the Middle Ages to sending teenagers off to fight modern wars. He satirizes the pro-war mentality that rationalizes brutality in the name of dubious ideals, the slaughtering of some to save others. The consequences of war are acceptable only if, like the Tralfamadorians, you have no past, present, or future to account for.
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Summary: The best kind of literature
Review: Slaughterhouse-Five is a startling novel, startling in its simplicity and complexity and startling in the extreme in its beauty. Certainly this book can't truly be understood by low-level readers or people who can't move beyond plot as being the main point of a book. The plot is next to irrelevant in some ways, and is essential in others. In fact, the entire book is that way, with every aspect being two extremes at once. It's certainly not recommended for everyone, and probably shouldn't be read by anyone who doesn't understand the title and subtitle. This is an extremely complex work, incredibly dense, and should really be considered a work of great literature. Read this book if you want to read something that can change your view on life. It certainly did mine.
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Summary: like an episode of Seinfeld
Review: I really enjoyed this book. It was my first Vonnegut, so I wasn't really sure what to expect. Perhaps there was more to it, but I just took the book for its face value, without over analyzing every grey little detail. To me, it was just like watching an episode of Seinfeld. It was short (ie sitcom in length), had a main character who conjured images of Kramer, and made liberal use of a catch phrase. So it went.
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