Slaughterhouse-five: Or, The Children's Crusade, a Duty-dance with Death
- ISBN-10
- 0440080215
- ISBN-13
- 9780440080213
- Series
- Slaughterhouse-Five
- Pages
- 186
- Language
- English
- Published
- 1969
- Publisher
- Delacorte Press
- Author
- Kurt Vonnegut
Description
War stories are impossible to write. Nevertheless, Vonnegut decided to begin his war story with Billy Pilgrim, a conqueror of the American dream. However, Billy's success isn't limited to business and war heroics. Billy broke the boundaries of time. He just can't control it. He flows through every moment of life, breaking all sense of chronological order within the novel. Arbitrarily being dragged through time at any moment, just as the Tralfamadorians, aliens who abducted Billy, taught him. Even to a slaughterhouse that, ironically, sheltered him from carpet-bombing in Dresden; 130,000 innocent people, an entire city, incinerated in a night.
