Slaughterhouse-Five (Identities and Issues in Literature)
At a glance:
- Author: Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
- First Published: 1969
- Genres: Long fiction, Psychological fiction, Science fiction
- Subjects: 1950’s, 1960’s, 1970’s, New York, North America or North Americans, Northeast, U.S., United States or Americans, Twentieth century, Other worlds, 1940’s, World War II, 1920’s, 1930’s, Time travel, Bombs, Prophecy or prophets, Germany or German people, Time, Aliens, space
- Locales: Ilium, NY, Cape Cod, MA, Dresden, Germany
The Work
Billy Pilgrim, the central character of Slaughterhouse-Five: Or, The Children’s Crusade, a Duty-Dance with Death, undergoes experiences close to those of Kurt Vonnegut as an infantryman taken prisoner in World War II. As Billy is, Vonnegut was sent to Dresden and sheltered underground while the city was firebombed in February, 1945. After the bombing Vonnegut was put to work extracting corpses from the rubble and incinerating them. The experience left a deep impression, and he struggled to write about it, finally doing so in this his sixth and most famous...
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