Kurt Vonnegut wrote Slaughterhouse Five, otherwise titled The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance With Death. Slaughterhouse FIve was written in 1969. It starts with a small narrative by Vonnegut himself, explaining the struggle it took for him to eventually get this book written. Once past the first chapter, the story of Billy Pilgrim begins: “Billy Pilgrim had come unstuck in time.” Before he became unstuck, Billy Pilgrim was born in New York and worked as an optometrist. He is a time travelling World War II veteran who is believed to be crazy, for the events in his life have happened to no other. His stories of being abducted into an alien zoo and randomly traveling through time, however, don't quite measure up to the horror of his time serving…show more content… Vonnegut does not dispute the concept of war as a whole, Rather he says that methods of war should change to make it less awful, which may make some readers speculate that Slaughterhouse Five is a pro war book, however the way the Vonnegut talks about his and Billy’s experience in the war gives the book a much stronger and more…show more content… No guts and glory. Just pain and suffering. Having to be filthy and sore and afraid all the time. The way war is shown both in Billy Pilgrim’s so called combat and his time in the prisoner of war camp proves that Vonnegut is attempting to show his readers that the act of war is not brave or heroic. It is a highly undesirable experience. This ruthful depiction give the whole book a very, very strong anti war message. He is showing the truth behind fighting in combat and how it will just eat away at a person's will to be happy and positive.
The argument that Vonnegut is writing Slaughterhouse Five as a pro war book really just doesn't hold up to the fact that he describes war a horrible thing. The fact that Billy Pilgrim was dropped into that horrid war is likely a big cause of a large amount of strife in his life. In Slaughterhouse Five Vonnegut paints war as one of the main antagonists the story. It is just a big manifestation of suffering and negativity that sticks with all who survived. All in all, yes, Slaughterhouse Five is most truly an anti war
