Slaughterhouse-Five, Or The Children's Crusade- A Duty-Dance With Death by Kurt Vonnegut
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Web ID: 15623609Good, not great.
Overall I enjoyed my experience reading this book, but I would not regard it as a must read classics amongst other 20th century works. Despite this I do appreciate Vonnegut’s writing style and I am interested in reading his other works.
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
So it blows
So it goes. So it goes, ad infinitum. That is the catch phrase of this novel. The modern version of this phrase would be “s__t happens.” In other words, bad things happen to people, and then Vonnegut sums it up with the words: “so it goes.” Yes, this novel is a classic and I had high expectations, especially considering I am partial to time-traveling stories and aliens. But now that I’ve read it, all I can say is “meh.” Mr. Pilgrim is the stand-in for the author and has a series of adventures inspired by the author’s own real-life experiences (of course, minus the time-traveling and the aliens). The time-traveling comes off as a gimmick as it is not much different than a character going through a series of flashbacks. When Pilgrim travels back in time that is essentially what he is doing. He relives old experiences and nothing changes in the past or future. Why it has to be called time-travel, I really don’t know. Why he, of all people, is kidnapped by the aliens and how he escapes is never explained. The aliens use Pilgrim for a zoo animal and also supply him with a female companion. How this is connected with the horrors of war, which is sort of the theme of this novel, again I am not sure. This novel isn’t so much of a story as it is a series of anecdotes of Billy Pilgrim’s life, and not very interesting at that. So it blows.
Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Life altering book!
In the past 2 years I have probably listened to this book over 12 times and read it about 5. The first Vonnegut book I've read (have a couple more on my shelf) the way he writes about time and death is brilliant. Even after nearly 20 readings and listenings, it still gets better every time and I catch little things I missed. The one I listen to is narrated by Ethan Hawke and he does an incredible job!
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Aliens and WWII?
This book is a well-done work that showcases what it was like to be a soldier in World War II and a veteran in the post-war period of America. Kurt Vonnegut's masterful use of language really helped me get a feel for the characters. His writing style worked really well with the event-focused plot that moves around because each description was short and sweet. The "meta" first section of his book where it is written in the first person as Vonnegut accomplishes the goal of getting the reader invested by setting up the truth behind the war and talking about its alternative title: 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘊𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥𝘳𝘦𝘯'𝘴 𝘊𝘳𝘶𝘴𝘢𝘥𝘦: 𝘈 𝘋𝘶𝘵𝘺-𝘋𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘋𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘩. Then he goes into the action, setting up a third-person, semi-autobiographical fiction story. He uses many different tools in his stories to show different experiences that happened during the war. He uses characters to show general things that people in the war were like and what they thought of. His everyman hero, Billy Pilgrim, lacks an illustrious job, life, or glorified role in the military but is just dragged on through life just like the rest of us. Montana Wildhack is an illustration of the lust and dissatisfaction with their wives that millitary men have in their own lives. The Tralfamadorians are another aspect that makes me enjoy the book. The fact that such a well-received, famous book would include stories with aliens. This also helps to break up the harshness and the "edge" that this book has due to the heavy subject matter of the War and the suffering and death it caused. His portrayal of the aliens as freaky little stoics makes me enjoy the book more by giving me something to laugh at the absurdness of to the point that the lines between the absurdism of the novel and the reality of the novel become blurred. Their succinct philosophy of "so it goes," helps to show Billy's attempts to cope with what the war has left him. With my own thoughts on the unchangeability of fate and just general pessimism helped me find some common ground with Pilgrim and be able to see the problems with that state of thinking. Because of this it has helped me reexamine my life and have an outside view one the very common view on the world in the form of pessimism. Overall, I enjoyed this book very much. Vonnegut's experience as a veteran really helps form this book and make it such a good book for you to read. Even though it may seem like I wrote a lot, I left out so much of what makes the book great. So, if an extremely thoughtful and well-written antiwar book with aliens sounds right up your alley, then this would be a great novel for you!
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Great book
Its a little bit more complex but its a good starter to get into more complicated/ harder to understand books and it has an interesting and weird plot .
Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Everything Was Beautiful
This is a classic for a reason. Both beautiful and horrifying, it's poetry in a novel.
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Nothing Like You've Ever Read Before
Consider this novel one that was slaughtered (see what I did there?) by high school curriculums nationwide. Don't let your tenth grade language arts teacher's boring rendition of an antiwar lecture deter you from reading this. It's epic. Kurt Vonnegut is epic. This is not your standard, everyday antiwar novel. There are ALIENS in this book. Actual real, live, breathing, alien-looking-in-all-their-alien-glory aliens! There are all sorts of wonderful, yet haunting imaginations that Vonnegut puts into this work that depicts the effects of wartime and loss with an incredibly unique and honest perspective. There was not a single moment of reading this novel that was boring or unexciting. It was riveting the whole entire time. Part of this is thanks to the events that occur. Most of this is thanks to Vonnegut's mystifying writing. He drags you in to a point that you wouldn't even consider letting go.
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
So It Goes
The book ‘Slaughterhouse-Five’ by Kurt Vonnegut blew my mind away because it negated and dismantled everything that I thought would make up an excellent novel but it is still the best novel I have ever read. It has no obvious structure but manages, still manages, to make it flow so well. The reason this structure works so well is that it shows that after a war, a soldier’s life is in ruins and with no clear purpose, which is the case with Billy Pilgrim, the hero of the story. Billy Pilgrim is a soldier who would witness the bombing of Dresden and is in a state of confusion because he doesn’t understand why people have to destroy so much. After the war, Billy claims that he has been kidnapped by aliens from Planet Tralfamadore. Kurt Voggnut leaves it up to us whether to believe if Billy was, in reality, kidnapped by aliens or not. If Billy was kidnapped by a bunch of aliens from Planet Tralfmadore then this book would be a science fiction novel, but if not, I could say that this is an example of Billy’s coping strategies to help him recover from the war. Billy then starts to spread the beliefs of Tralfamadore which exclaims that our life has already been established and that all we can do is accept it and move on to help us understand that we cannot change anything. I do highly recommend this book, but I will warn you, that this is probably the most bizarre book you will ever read but bear with it because by the end you will understand why this book is the most iconic and powerful statement against war ever written.
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com