George Orwell s The Slaughter House Five - 1302 Words

Views on War in Vonnegut s Slaughter House Five Many people returned from World War II with disturbing images forever stuck in their heads. Others returned and went crazy and terrors faced. The protagonist in Slaughter-House Five, Billy Pilgrim, has to deal with some of these things along with many other complications in his life. Slaughter House Five (1968), by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., is an anti-war novel about a man’s life before, after and during the time he spent fighting in World War II. While Billy is trying to escape from behind enemy lines, he is captured and imprisoned in a German slaughterhouse. The author tells of Billy’s terrible experiences there. After the war, Billy marries and goes to school to become an optometrist. During†¦show more content†¦There is an old general there who was a teacher before joining in the war efforts. One day, in a conversation with Billy and another older man in the hospital, the general starts to talk about what he thinks of the war. He says, You know-- we’ve had to imagine the war here, and we have imagined that it was being fought by aging men like ourselves. We had forgotten that wars were fought by babies. When I saw those freshly shaved faces, it was a shock. ‘My God, my God----’ I said to myself, ‘It’s the Children’s Crusade’ (p. 106). This general feels that war is nothing but babies being murdered by one another. He is disturbed by the thought of war and the fact that so many young people are dying for its cause. Billy, the protagonist of this novel, also has bitter feelings about war. While he is in the zoo on the planet of Tralfamadore, he is able to communicate with the aliens. In a conversation with them, he says that he is from a planet that has been engaged in senseless slaughter since the beginning of time (p. 116). This senseless slaughter that he is referring to is war. Billly himself was in the war, but obviously thinks that there is no reason for it and by no means should it ever be necessary. In the same conversation with the aliens, Billy goes on to explain some of the most disturbing images he had seen in the war. He says, I myself have seen the bodies of school girls who were boiled alive in a water tower by my own countrymenShow MoreRelatedHow Does Read Literature Like A Professor1814 Words   |  8 PagesHow To Read Literature Like a Professor By Thomas C. Foster 1. Chapter 1- Every Trip Is A Quest (Except When It’s Not) a. The five aspects of the quest are the quester, a place to go, a stated reason to go there, challenges and trials on the way, and the real reason to go there. When I read The Secret Life Of the Bees the quester was Lily, she was looking to go to Tiburon to find out more information about her mother and the past. On her journey she runs away from her father, falls in love, and