First Impressions of Slaughterhouse Five

            Ironically enough my brother had to read this same book over the summer for his sophomore English class. So when I sat down to begin reading it over the break I asked him if he could remember anything about the book. He said that the book was confusing, jumped from place to place, and that the main character gets captured by aliens. This wasn’t exactly what I was expected from a satirical anti-war book but it sounded intriguing so I jumped in. I was almost anxious to see if it made any more sense to me than it did to him. The first chapter was a bit confusing and I found myself constantly wondering when the actual story was going to begin. It seemed odd that the first chapter of the book was about writing the book, but the background helped set up the rest of the book.

            One of the first things I had to get used to when the story started was the main character Billy’s detachment from time. Vonnegut is able to use this throughout the story to contrast different situations in Billy’s life allowing the reader to put them in perspective. Such as when he is being showered in the prison camp and then travels through time to when his mother is bathing him as an infant. One of the most interesting times Vonnegut uses Billy’s detachment from time is when he is watching the documentary on World War II bomber pilots in reverse. When he is describing the factory workers who build the bombs, he says the workers carefully disassemble the bombs and the minerals hidden cleverly so that they “will never hurt anyone ever.”  I thought this line was funny because Vonnegut shows us just how ironic and ridiculous building a bomb is. In his own satirical way he is showing us we would be far safer if we never even took the materials to build a bomb out of the earth.

            The first several chapters did have some humor but most of it was a darker humor. The death of characters seemed to be treated as very unimportant. In one example the characters see smoke in the distance and Vonnegut says “There was a battle there. People were dying there. So it goes.” It is comical how serious events like this are understated in the book and nearly every death is followed by the statement “or so it goes.” I found myself laughing at this but almost felt bad for doing so. It will be interesting to see how Vonnegut uses this dark humor in the remainder of the book and how exactly the aliens will fit into the story.