A review by znnys
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

5.0

The first time I read this book was over ten years ago. I didn't understand it, then. Barely absorbed it and remembered virtually nothing but the title. But I'm glad I came back to it now, with a more mature understanding of postmodernism, WW2, and trauma. This was a book that absolutely sucked me in, a harrowing adventure into the dark irreverence of war through time travel and alien abduction. War, from Vonnegut's perspective, is both a comic futility, and a transgression so alien that it changes its victims into something beyond human. I certainly wasn't pro-war going into this reading, but it gave me an entirely new perspective on the subject. You can tell this is a deeply personal work, and learning Vonnegut spent two decades writing it makes a lot of sense - to both the brilliance of the book, as well as how difficult it must have been for him to process his experience.

Spoiler

There's a brief moment towards the end where Billy Pilgrim finds a book by Kilgore Trout about a man who travels back in time to meet Jesus. He meets Jesus when he's twelve, and training to be a carpenter. Him and his father are commissioned to build a crucifix by Romans and they're grateful to have been given the work.

That scene really moved me. I think it expresses the nature of war so incredibly well: the young and innocent and manipulated in to doing work that they do not fully comprehend as destructive. It is work that will inevitably destroy them, too.