Slaughter house five (20-40) Kurt Vonnegut

The Second chapter is the start of the story. The book takes us through our main character Billy Pilgrim’s life. The narrator takes us through our protagonist’s depressing life. After the War he became rich, married, and had two children. Until this point his life seams quite happy. Then in 1968 on a flight to Montreal, his plane crashed, everyone died except him. In the crash he had some head bruising which made him go mad. After this he starts saying his made contact with aliens and how they teach him to time travel. His daughter now married has to take care o him because of the obsession his take on the alien civilization of Trafalmordians. Billy has consumed his life in search of writing a letter for the News Leader, the local paper. The News Leader published the first letter he wrote on the Trafalmordians. The book continues on to describing the odd soldier that Billy was, he was in an idiot. It seams Billy has created the illusion of the aliens in his mind to shelter from his real life.

This shelter he created relates to the film directed by Martins Scorsese called Shutter Island starring Leonardo DiCaprio. DiCaprio’s character, Teddy Daniels behaves similarly to Billy. Teddy Daniels goes mad when his wife drowns their children. He creates the idea that he is investigating the disappearance of a patient in a asylum. Initially Detective Daniels was investigating the asylum known as Shutter Island when he snapped. His mind then created the illusion that he was still investigating the asylum when he had actually become a patient. Both Daniels and Billy created an illusion to their conscious mind that they had a mission. Yet both of them knew deep down that they were insane.

Slaughter House Five (Pg. 1-22) By Kurt Vonnegut

The book is written in first person perspective through the eyes of Kurt Vonnegut a Second World War veteran. The author seeks to write a book on the bombing of the little town of Dresden. It takes place after the war, with the main Vonnegut seeking information for his unwritten book. He is now a married man with two daughters and calls himself an “old fart”. He is now addicted on doing late calls to operators to find pieces of his memory. To research on his book he finds a old friend from war, Bernard V. O’Hare. With his daughters he goes to visit in Pennsylvania. They have a good chat about war when Vonnegut comes to realize he has no good memory of war. Then he has a good chat his friend wife, Marry O’Hare, which he dedicates his book to. In his chat he comes up with a title and a purpose for his book:  “The Children’s Crusade”.

 The style Vonnegut uses is quite realistic and appealing. You can feel what the character has been through in the words. War has come to define the writing. Although I haven’t been at war I can definitely relate. Our author has, as many characters in both movies and history been impacted greatly by his experiences at war. We can take for example Saving Private Ryan. Matt Damon’s character relives his experiences in WW2. The director (Spielberg) shows us the importance of brotherhood and the brutality in war. Matt Damon’s character is in the movie an old man remembering the other soldiers that gave their lives for his rescue. As Vonnegut, director Steven Spielberg portrays the effects of such small yet impacting experiences. Although both Kurt Vonnegut and Private Ryan (Damon’s character) have tried to live on, they can’t. The memories of war don’t let them, they are indeed changed men.