Looking Into the Past in Vonneguts Slaughter House-Five Essay

feeling Into the Past in Vonneguts Slaughter House-Five In the spring of 1945, near the block up of World War II, American and British bombers rained a hail of gouge upon the city of Dresden, Germany. With an estimated 135,000 dead, Dresden is known as one of the deadliest attacks in Hi legend, nearly in two manners as many final stages than the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Kurt Vonnegut was among the few who lived through the firestorm he wrote a book about it in fact. Slaughter House-Five (1969) is a put on recount of his experience of the war. Many of the events (at least the parts set in WWII) are historical experiences of Kurt. The people in the war are, for the most(prenominal) part, real Vonnegut just changes all the names. The main character, however does not seem to dedicate been a real person, and has a very unusual war experience. The story begins with nightstick Pilgrim becoming unstuck in measure. Throughout the novel, Billy beat travels to different times i n his life. Hes never sure where hell go next, still he alship canal returns to WWII, which is the main plot line. After Billys life summary, which very summarizes many of the events of the novel, the story jumps to when Billy first became unstuck in time 1944. Billy is a chaplains assistant in the army during WWII, and is called oversees after the death of a chaplains assistant in Europe. He is sent to his regiment during their pastime in the Battle of the Bulge they do not win. Not being much of a military man, Billy Pilgrim wanders behind German lines until he meets three separate American soldiers. After many near deaths, Billy is captured by the Germans and taken to a prisoner camp. While on his way to the camp Billy travels to 1967, the year he is abducted by a locomote saucer from Tralfam... ...azy from a lack of water. When Billy saw the condition of the horses, he burst into tears. He hadnt cried about anything else in the war (197). Even during other parts of his li fe Billy cried very little, though he a great deal saw things worth crying about (197). People seem to ache their sense of compassion for life. We often treat animals as inferior emotionless creatures, and in war, we kill other humans for things that really require no killing.By reading Vonneguts look into the past, hopefully we can learn from our mistakes. I could never find a good reason for killing 135,000 people, most of them civilians. To try for world peace is a nearly impossible task. However, we whitethorn be able to look into history and find better ways to deal with our disagreements than killing.Work Cited Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughter House-Five. New York Dell Publishing, 1991.