Slaughterhouse Five (Vonnegut)

★★★⯨☆ (3.5/5)

This is a great book to read if you haven’t read in a while and want to gain the momentum back, especially if you read a Vonnegut book before and likes his writing style.

I found the plot of story to be interesting, and the fragmented nature of the story with switching between the “past, present and future” was done well, although the concept is probably less interesting and original now than how it probably felt in its release. To be honest, I haven’t researched or looked into whether his concept is brand new or old, but would suspect it to be.

I would think it would be right? Like before the industrial revolution there was probably very little or no desire to write time travelling books as your, your parents, children, grandchildren and so on would almost be exactly the same. Though I still would think people, specifically elders, would still have talked about the good old days, but I doubt there was really anyone thinking this far into the future at all.

Anyways the biggest issue I have of this book is Vonnegut writing style. If you like Vonneguts writing style then I think this book would be great for you! However I didn’t like Vonneguts anemic, monotonous writing style. If I were to blind submit an extract of the book into the Creative Language section of GCSE English Language I would be suprised if it got above a 7, which is basically a 9 really so I guess it isn’t too bad.

Now this dullness actually does affect the story for me as the fragmented nature of the story. The switching of “past,present and future” scenes that happens within the chapters is hard to recognize until I’m in the 2-3 sentences sometimes as the prose is so dull that I’m not paying attention nor have a full image of the scene in my head. The words just passing straight through my head. To give some him slack this could be entirely a skill issue from me (as I’m quite brain-rotted), but for this story type it is so important to engage the reader otherwise (like me) they have to constantly re-read the page or paragraph. Fortunately the story isn’t hard to understand.

I would hate to leave this monologue on a bad tone, especially because the book wasn’t as bad as I am making it to seem from this review. Vonnegut had amazing ideas about the story, characters and their overall tone. Like one thing which seems to be an overarching factor of a story is the idea of powerlessness. In this Billy seems to meek who unfortunately got into this situation not even intentionally, who has to live his unique experience of living of having to switche between his adult, child and older self. Past, present and future has already happened so he is just left to experience it. Just focus on the good parts as told by the Talfamadorians. Now that does come off most of the time as indifference, with occsionaly sobbing. Almost like a form of learned helplessness (In this case it is valid as he genuinely has no control). I think as a anti-war book the idea for it is perfect - everyone in the war an everyone else seems helpless to what is happening only being victims to the situations. I find the situations of him as kid to be interestnig, like all the situations he ends up are very kid like, instead of trying to paint him like a pure innocent kid, it paints what a kid realistically looks like. His later life is also interesting because he seems to kind of have a detachment to his “loved-ones” and how he feels, as its already happened. I’m not clever enough to extract the idea out of this, but I think it shows how people in war how it affects their life much much after war and it never really leaves their character.