!!!Spoiler Warning!!! If you haven’t read this book yet, I give away some key spoilers!
Slaughterhouse-Five
by Kurt Vonnegut
So it goes.
Honestly, the best thing I can say about this book is that it’s brief.
I know a lot of people love this book, and I don’t want to take anything away from that, but I cannot understand what they see in it.
I’m sure there must be a deeper meaning that I’m just missing.
You sound to me as though you don’t believe in free will.
This book is basically about an idiot who goes to war, time travels to different points in his life (if you don’t believe he’s just crazy), gets kidnapped by aliens, and learns that time isn’t linear at all, and everything happens because it’s already happened, and will happen, and is happening, all at once.
This is not a pro-war book. This is not an anti-war book. This is just a war book, because war happened and there was nothing we could do about it.
He said, too, that he had been kidnapped by a flying saucer in 1967. The saucer was from the planet Tralfamadore, he said. He was taken to Tralfamadore, where he was displayed naked in a zoo, he said.
Billy is an idiot. He goes through life not really understanding anything that’s happening to him. He just takes everything in his stride. He’s clearly crazy as a cuckoo clock. By some strange turns of fate, the worst thing that ever happens to him is that he gets his boots stolen. Other than that, everything seems to be pretty simple in the life of Billy Pilgrim.
That’s one thing Earthlings might learn to do, if they tried hard enough: Ignore the awful times, and concentrate on the good ones.
I just didn’t like the way the book flits back and forth, and waffles philosophic on everything from sex to novels. It’s difficult to follow, despairingly boring and totally unenjoyable.
I’m glad for the people that seemed to love it. Not for me.
Villain Rating
There really isn’t a villain in this book. I guess the closest we come would be the inevitability of fate.
Everything happens because it’s predetermined in a world where time is linear. It has happened, it will happen, it is happened. There’s nothing else to do about it. So it goes. 0/10
Happy Reading,
Claire
Love the Villain 