Cecily's review of Slaughterhouse-Five (original) (raw)
- Home
- My Books
- Browse ▾
- Recommendations
- Choice Awards
- Genres
- Giveaways
- New Releases
- Lists
- Explore
- News & Interviews
- Art
- Biography
- Business
- Children's
- Christian
- Classics
- Comics
- Cookbooks
- Ebooks
- Fantasy
- Fiction
- Graphic Novels
- Historical Fiction
- History
- Horror
- Memoir
- Music
- Mystery
- Nonfiction
- Poetry
- Psychology
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction
- Self Help
- Sports
- Thriller
- Travel
- Young Adult
- More Genres
Discover new books on Goodreads
Meet your next favorite book
Cecily's Reviews > Slaughterhouse-Five
A strange and intriguing book that I found very hard to rate: a mixture of wartime memoir and sci fi - occasionally harrowing, sometimes funny and other times thought-provoking.
PLOT
It is the episodic story of Billy Pilgrim, a small town American boy, who is a POW in the second world war, later becomes a successful optometrist and who occasionally and accidentally travels in time to other periods of his life, so he has "memories of the future". Oh, he also gets abducted by aliens, along with some furniture. "So it goes." (That is the catchphrase of the book, and I found rather annoying after the umpteenth time. It's used in Philip K Dick's "Ubik" (review here), which I assumed was a nod to Vonnegut, until I discovered both were published in the same year).
It starts with an old man reminiscing about his life. He is asked about the point of writing an anti-war book, "Why don't you write an anti-glacier book instead?" After that, it jumps about, much as Billy does, "Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time... he is in a constant state of stage fright".
The most thought-provoking bits for me were Billy's mother who tried "to construct a life that makes sense from things she found in gift shops", the bathos with which some war events were described (e.g. being executed for stealing a teapot), and the alien Tralfamadorian's multi-dimensional and multi-sexual world. For instance, they have five sexes, but their differences were in the fourth dimension and they couldn't imagine how time looks to Billy (they also told him that seven sexes were essential for human reproduction!).
MESSAGE
A main message is surprisingly positive: if we could only see or feel the fourth dimension, we would realise that "when a person dies he only appears to die. He is very much alive in the past".
SPOONS
Spoons are mentioned oddly often, as a description of how people lie (lovers or fallen soldiers). Then, near the end, actual spoons are briefly important. I have no idea whether this is significant.
UPDATE: Thanks to a comment from Matthias on his excellent review (read it here), I have, not an answer, but a great spoon reference in The Matrix:
"Do not try and bend the spoon, that's impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth: There is no spoon."
Spoon Boy
RELATED BOOKS
It has strong links with several other books: as it's Vonnegut, the "fictitious" sci fi writer, Kilgore Trout, gets several mentions.
The mode of time travel clearly influenced Octavia Butler's Kindred, review here,
and Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife, review here.
When he watches a WW2 film in reverse, it's very like Amis's Time's Arrow, review here.
For a more linguistic and philosophical take on the implications of Tralfamadorians living in all time, simultaneously, see the heptapods in Ted Chiang's The Story of Your Life, review here.
Also compare it with the Borges short story A Weary Man’s Utopia, which is in The Book of Sand, review here
It also left me wanting to read a Tralfamadorian book with its simultaneous threads, "no beginning, no middle, no end... What we love in our books are the depths of many marvellous moments seen all at one time", which is surely what Vonnegut was trying to create for mere human readers.
Sign into Goodreads to see if any of your friends have read_Slaughterhouse-Five_.
Quotes Cecily Liked
“Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five
“All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five
“There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at one time.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five
Reading Progress
November 7, 2010 – Shelved
November 7, 2010 –Finished Reading
Comments Showing 1-50 of 61 (61 new)
Add a reference:
Search for a book to add a reference
add: link cover
Welcome back. Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account.
