The Movie Slaughter House Five - 1810 Words

Arianne Rodriguez Professor Jordan ENC 1102 April 14, 2015 The Reality of Warfare During February 1945, World War II had long begun, affecting millions of people throughout the entire world. Disease and famine were faced by both civilians and soldiers, and the casualties were about 80 million. Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughter House-Five mostly takes place during the war, specifically during the time of the infamous Dresden bombing. The main character, Billy Pilgrim, is an American soldier who lived to tell, and was present during, the bombing. It is through Billy Pilgrim’s personal story that Vonnegut thoroughly reveals the harshness of war and its long term effects. Typically the reaction people exhibit after hearing about a death is†¦show more content†¦He makes the harsh idea that death really is, sound like it’s inevitable, and so there is no reason to mourn. Just like death, war is also harsh. The tone most people have when speaking about war, is the same tone Billy has regarding deaths. They disregard so many im portant things that come with war, the millions of dollars spent, the tragic amount of deaths and most deaths being civilians who are completely innocent. They speak like if war were inevitable and there was nothing anyone could do about it. In the novel, Vonnegut gives an example, â€Å"What he meant, of course, was that there would always be wars, that they were as easy to stop as glaciers.†(Vonnegut 3). Although this is true, it does not take away from the harsh reality that war really is. What is very ironic is the fact that Billy Pilgrim’s harsh mentality about deaths is so easily noticed, yet people have not yet noticed the harshness that war really is, and in reality; war and death go hand in hand. Vonnegut uses â€Å"so it goes† in a way to almost mimic the majority of the population who are so oblivious to what war really is. The entire point of the book is to bring attention to how harsh war genuinely is, and that is why the words are so constantly bei ng repeated, so that people make the connection that war brings death, and since death is harsh, so is war. Today video games about war make millions