Slaughterhouse-Five (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
- First Published: 1969
- Type of Work: Novel
- 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
In full, the title, Slaughterhouse-Five: Or, The Children's Crusade, a Duty-Dance with Death, says much about Vonnegut's sixth novel. This is the novel in which Vonnegut confronts his traumatic experience of having been in Dresden when, on February 13, 1945, it was bombed by the Allies, producing a firestorm that virtually destroyed the city and killed perhaps 130,000 people. He survived the raid in the underground meat locker of a slaughterhouse, to spend the following days exhuming corpses from the ruins and cremating them. For him, Dresden becomes the symbol of the senseless...
[The entire page is 1206 words long]
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