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A short summary of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five. This free synopsis covers all the crucial plot points of Slaughterhouse-Five.
- Plot Overview
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- Kurt Vonnegut and Slaughterhouse-Five Background
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. was born in Indianapolis in 1922, a...
- Suggestions for Further Reading
Kurt Vonnegut. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing, 1977....
- Movie Adaptations
Slaughterhouse Five, 1972 Major Cast: Michael Sacks, Ron...
- Mini Essays
From a general summary to chapter summaries to explanations...
- Protagonist
Billy Pilgrim is the protagonist of Slaughterhouse-Five.The...
- Antagonist
The primary antagonist in Slaughterhouse-Five is not a...
- Chapter 8
A summary of Chapter 8 in Kurt Vonnegut's...
- Plot Overview
In-depth summary and analysis of every chapter of Slaughterhouse-Five. Visual theme-tracking, too. Explanations, analysis, and visualizations of Slaughterhouse-Five 's themes. Slaughterhouse-Five 's important quotes, sortable by theme, character, or chapter. Description, analysis, and timelines for Slaughterhouse-Five 's characters.
Within ‘Slaughterhouse-Five,’ Kurt Vonnegut taps into a number of interesting themes, uses a few quite memorable images, and asks important questions about war and free will. Article written by Emma Baldwin. B.A. in English, B.F.A. in Fine Art, and B.A. in Art Histories from East Carolina University.
Therefore, the novel’s “jumbled,” non-linear structure reinforces Vonnegut’s message about the violence of war. The novel opens and closes with chapters in which Vonnegut directly addresses his own war experiences and his struggle to write the very novel you are reading.
Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) is a famous American novelist who earned fame from his war-time memory-based satirical novel Slaughterhouse-Five. Its title is a satire on how they survived in a slaughterhouse. His first work was Player Piano (1952), and four subsequent works came after it.
Vonnegut begins the story of Billy Pilgrim, a man who has “come unstuck in time” and who was also captured in the Battle of the Bulge, taken prisoner by the Germans, and kept in a slaughterhouse during the Dresden bombings.
Slaughterhouse-Five tells the story of a man who becomes “unstuck” in time. Billy Pilgrim, an average American, grows up in New York and trains to be an optometrist. He does good enough at school and is then drafted into the military during World War II.
