Slaughterhouse Five Essay, Research Paper

Slaughterhouse-Five

By: Kurt Vonnegut

Slaughterhouse five is a very complex and twisted story about a World War Two veteran. The story is set in three different time periods of his? life. His name is Billy Pilgrim and he lives in Ilium New York. Billy graduated high school in the top third of his class. He attended night school at the Ilium School of Optometry. Soon after he was drafted and his father died while hunting.

During war he was a chaplain?s assistant. While serving he saw some action and was captured by the Germans. He met a fat antitank gunner named Roland Weary. He wasn?t very popular or liked by people. They were taken to a prison with one hundred other American POWs.

They were shipped by train for a few days and were temporarily set up at a crossroad. There the prisoners were given coats. Billy was given a civilan coat that was too small and in that coat he found a diamond.

There, the English prisoners took care of them and helped Billy from going insane. While there they were given coats and Billy received a civilian coat with a large diamond in it.. He also found a pair a silver paratrooper boots. He looked like a clown. While on the way to that prison Weary died of a foot disease and asked people to avenge him. A couple days later the Americans were sent to Dresden to work. On the way there Billy met a car thief named Paul Lazzaro who was going to avenge Weary?s death. The person Weary said was responsible was Billy but Lazzaro had better things on his mind. After a few days in Dresden the city was firebombed. The city was completely destroyed, and to Billy it looked like the moon. 130,000 souls lost their lives that night and that was the end of the war.