User:Avengingangel316/sandbox

plot
Paul Lazzaro told Billy Pilgrim that he would kill him in about 20 years, after they get out of prison, because Pilgrim had caused a friend of Lazzaro's to die, and Lazzaro wanted revenge. Lazzaro said that "Nobody ever got it from Lazzaro who didn't have it coming." Pilgrim and all the other prisoners were taken to Dresden. Pilgrim and the others are then escorted into "Schlachthof-funf," or in English, Slaughterhouse Five. The book fast-forwards in time to when Billy Pilgrim crashes in an airplane, when he allegedly went crazy. The book reverses back to World War Two, and he walks in on showering girls, and also eats syrup that is made for pregnant women. Howard W. Campbell, Jr., a high ranking German officer that was once in the American military, and he now is at the camp Pilgrim is in to try and recruit some of the prisoners into a special battalion consisting of only previous American soldiers. The soldiers refused adamantly, and then the book shifts again to the future, when Pilgrim is going to a party with Kilgore Trout, Pilgrim's favorite author. Valencia, after hearing about how her husband, Pilgrim, got into a plane crash, rushes over to the hospital, and dies on the way from carbon monoxide poisoning. When Pilgrim finally gets out of the hospital, he goes to New York to get on a radio station to tell the world about time travel, from which he got kicked. The time period then switched to the past, in World War Two, where Billy is alone in a carriage after the bombing of Dresden, and he was stopped by a German couple. He got out and sees the horse that is leading his carriage, and it is in horrible condition, so he breaks down and cries; this was one of the few times Pilgrim actually shows emotion in the novel. The perspective then switched to the future when he is on Tralfamadore, and he was talking with Montana Wildhack, who was breastfeeding. The novel then transitioned back in time to World War Two for the final time, where Pilgrim was digging a mine for the dead corpses lying around the city, which were then decided to be burned instead on any spot that they lay, for sanitary reasons. Then one day, the stable that they were being kept in was unlocked, and war was suddenly over in Europe. As they wandered out into the street, there was a lone vehicle: an abandoned wagon drawn by two horses, and was coffin-shaped. Billy hear's a bird say "Poo-tee-weet," just like how the narrator said the novel would end.

major themes
When Billy Pilgrim is abducted by the Tralfamadorians and taken to their planet, they teach him the key concept of the novel, which is, as one critic describes: "all moments in the past, present and future exist always, and that death is just an unpleasant moment, neither an end nor a beginning." Another main point that the author writes about is the bombing of Dresden, or how one critic says, "the novel is anchored in the grim reality of the pointless destruction of Dresden." This quote describes the way the author uses the bombing of Dresden to center the main ideals of the novel on, such as the idea of never truly dying, because the inhabitants of Dresden will always be alive in the past. Slaughterhouse-Five is considered as the one book in Vonnegut's collection that demonstrates his "trademark grand themes." Some of which are described by one critic as being "the lunacy of kings, the improbability of existence, the yearling hero's struggle with duty and love and the meaning of heroism."

style
The author "[populates] his fiction with alter egos," meaning that he tries putting himself into his characters places, such as the soldier, Billy Pilgrim, and relates them to experiences in his own writing. As one critic says, "His novels questioned the nature of existence and the purpose of life, often with blackly comic humor and fantastical political satire." The same critic further proves his point by including how Vonnegut uses "[the book's] signature hook, 'So it goes,' which followed every death," and shows his disregard for life. Another critic describes the novel as having "intrusive japery, [which] stands for the mind's refusal to process it all," which is, in the critic's mind, "a fortuitous fit of style and subject.

adaptation
There were four audio cassettes of the novel, narrarated by actor Ethan Hawke, made in 2003. The cassettes last for a total of 6 hours. One critic described his narration as being a "powerful and popular work that is sure to attract many listeners; it is therefore a shame that actor Ethan Hawkes narration is not stronger. His reading is tolerable, but much of it is a conspirational whisper that sounds as if Hawke were reading a bedtime story to children."