Slaughterhouse Five

Slaughterhouse-Five follows the life of Billy Pilgrim, a chaplain's assistant in World War II, who is captured by the Germans and sent to a Dresden prison camp. The moral center of the book is not that war is evil, but that if we cannot change anything, then it is necessary to accept things and enjoy them as they are. Midway through the novel, Billy finds himself abducted by the Tralfamadorians -- aliens who exist simultaneously across all points in the space-time continuum. As he learns about the Tralfamadorian perception of time as an eternal present where nothing ever truly dies, Billy experiences his personal timeline out of sequence and freefalls through past and present. Through his experience, readers come to understand that life is both pre-determined and random, hilarious and tragic, sweet and bitter and tragic all at the same time.

tralfamadorians ꞏ postmodernism ꞏ black comedy ꞏ kurt vonnegut ꞏ existentialism ꞏ kilgore trout ꞏ contemporary fiction ꞏ historical fiction ꞏ dresden bombing ꞏ time travel ꞏ metafiction ꞏ ptsd ꞏ aliens ꞏ satire ꞏ free will ꞏ world war ii ꞏ science fiction ꞏ american literature ꞏ absurdism ꞏ antiwar ꞏ fate