Slaughterhouse-Five

To start off, I like this book.  It is easy to read, but has me questioning a lot of the times what is going on.  At least I am not always consciously aware of how Vonnegut is doing that which he does. I think that might be a good thing though.

The unstuckness of time in the novel is a key device.  Although sleep can serve as a transition between events, when Billy Pilgrim wakes up it is not always tomorrow.  Sometimes it took a little while for me to place the events within the context of time, especially Billy's stay in the mental hospital.  Basically, there is a common thread and progression ideas that is not ordered around time, which is a great literary technique.

The Children's Crusade motif is a powerful aspect within the novel.  Billy (a kid's name) is part of World War II, and very obviously it mentally scarred him, if not on more spiritual levels as well, even though he really did not kill anyone or do great sin or anything like that.  Just that he saw the terror of Dresden and the war in general left a mark.  The war is never idealized, but portrayed truthfully.  Humans are not at their best.  When he is wandering after the Battle of the Bulge one learns a lot about war in general.  War is not black and white, "the Germans are evil" type thing.  Weary, an American, is about as sick and twisted as it gets.  He is obsessed with torture and because he is not accepted by the "cool kids" he takes out his anger and frustration on someone weaker than he is (Billy).  He nearly breaks Billy's spine by kicking him while he is down.  Ironically, Billy is saved by the Germans (in this case, old men, boys, and a whimpering German Shepherd), who then capture him and Weary.  The novel challenges stereotypes of war in every way, especially by emphasizing the innocence of Billy and the other soldiers like him.  Billy, like the Children Crusaders, went off with out even a weapon, but pretty much just his clothes.

I can't help but think of the whole Kony thing since it has lately gone viral on any and all forms of social media.  For the record, I knew about him a couple months ahead of everyone else.  I think he is doing something evil, but analyzing what makes it so evil may be of use to one's understanding of this novel.  The coercion is a big no-no, which was prevalent during WWII.  I think that the loss of innocence and the fact that Billy and everyone else really did not know what they were getting into is a bigger issue.  Basically, in the case of WWII, Kony, and the Children's Crusade, adults (or at least people that knew what kind of a slaughter they were bringing the kids to) exploited children who did not know that they were even being taken advantage of, or were conditioned to think that they weren't.  This is dark stuff.

In light of the darkness of the real heart issue of the novel, Vonnegut makes a big farce of it.  Slaughterhouse-Five is akin to "A Modest Proposal" in that it does not use the direct and more surface oriented line of moral attack, but instead is more farcical.  It crumbles the walls by digging under them, not by breaking them down.

Overall, I like the book so far, and cannot put it down.