Slaughterhouse+Five

= //Slaughterhouse Five// By: Kurt Vonnegut= By: Mitchell M. code format="ocaml" Biography of Kurt Vonnegut: code

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was born on Novmeber 11, 1922 in Indianapolis, Indiana. He went to Cornell University from 1940 to 1942. He then enlisted the U.S. Army. The Army sent him to odern day Carnegie Mellon University to study engineering in 1943. One year later, he was sent to Europe to fight in the Battle of the Bulge. After the battle, he was captured and became of P.O.W. When the Allied forces bombed Dresden, Germany where he was being held, he witnessed all of the devestation that it had caused. He and some of his fellow P.O.W.s had escaped from the underground meat locker that they were working in to make vitamins.

When he got back, he married Jane marie Cox and had three children. He worked three jobs as a newspaper reporter, teacher, and a P.R. worker for General Electric before starting his writing career. His sister died in 1958 and him and his wife adopted her three children. In 1984, he attempted to commit suicide after suffering from depression.

In 1952, his first novel //Player Piano// was published. His later novels and short stories consisted of
 * //The Sirens of Titan// (1959)
 * //Mother Night// (1961)
 * //Cat's Cradle// (1963)
 * //Slaughterhouse-Five// (1969)
 * //Breakfast of Champions// (1973)
 * //Jailbird// (1979)
 * //Deadeye Dick// (1982)
 * //Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage// (1981)

Kurt Vonnegut blended literature with science fiction and humor, the absurd with pointed social commentary. He used many unique characters and strange worlds. In many of his nooks he uses war time as the setting. It is a book very similar to his own experiences with a few added science-fiction twists. The way he uses his "different" mind is what makes it such a great novel.

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=Synopsis=

Billy Pilgrim, the main character jumps through time becaus eof his abduction by the Tralfamadorians. The beginning of the book starts off with Vonnegut talking from his point of view. he is talking about everything he was thinking about before he wrote the book. He explains how he got his ideas. In most of the book, he is in Germany during World War II. He is a German P.O.W. While he is captured along with his friends, he flashed through time seeing all parts of his life. Both the beginning, the middle, and the end. Nothing is in any certain order and he always seems to end up back in Dresden during the war.

He returns to his home town of Ilium and finishes his dream of becoming an optometrist. He gets engaged to Valencia Merble. and eventually has a breakdown and gets put into a veteran's hospital and get shock treatments to help him. he gets married to her and lives the american dream. He owns a Cadillac, has good appliance, and his wife owns jewels. But at his wedding he has a nother nervous breakdown because of a memory of Dresden he gets from seeing a barbershop quartet.

After the night of his daughter's wedding, he is abducted by the two foot tall, up-side-down plunger headed, Trafamadorians. The bring him to their planet and mate hi m with an actress who had also been abducted from earth. They tell him about their perception of time and that when a person dies, they only die at that time. Somewhere, in another time, they are alive. Once he gets back to earth he tries to tell people of his experience and nobody believes him. Since nobody believes him, he records himself saying how he will die. Exactly how, when, and where it will happen.

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=Criticism=

__Negative__
The beginning of this book confused me a lot. It starts out with Vonnegut talking about himself writing the book that you're reading. I was very confused up until the second chapter. Another think that i didn't like was tht he repeats the line, "So it goes." He says this repeatedly throughout the book. I was getting pretty annoyed. I think he over-used the line. It would have been fine if he would have said it a little less.



__Positive__
I liked the book very much. I liked the humor mixed in with the action. It was pretty comedic at times and the war parts were pretty cool. Also, I liked the bits of Science-Fiction thrown in. Another thing that I liked about the book is that it was pretty easy to comprehend. There wasn't a lot of complicated vocabulary and sentence structure. The book was a good and easy read. I also liked that he used some facts from his experiences when he was a German P.O.W. and some of it is first-hand experiences.

=Literary Info=

I would reccomend it for people that like any of the before mentioned types of books; Comedy, War, Science-Fiction. This book is in a very simple text. It doesn't use many elements such as metaphors and paradoxes. This is what makes this book so easy and comprehendable to read.

=Bibliography=


 * Kurt Vonnegut Biography: []
 * Youtube: Battle of the Bulge footage - []
 * Kurt Vonnegut's __Slaughterhouse Five__
 * Star Photo. 4 June. []
 * Confused Man Photo. 4 June. []
 * BotB photo. 4 June. []
 * Kurt Vonnegut Photo. 4 June. []