Slaughterhouse Five: Not Worth the Time

If you tried reading Slaughterhouse FIve by Kurt Vonnegut because you thought it was a major war story you will be very disappointed. Although the back of the book and its title may suggest that it is a war story about the infamous firebombing of Dresden it is not like that at all. The book starts off with Kurt Vonnegut visiting his old friend Bernard V. O’hare and recalling old memories about the war. The next chapter after this is when the real story begins. Throughout the story the plot often switches up and focuses on the main character Billy Pilgrim’s time in WWII and his time getting abducted by the time traveling aliens called the Tralfamadorians.

Kurt Vonnegut’s writing style if widely different from those of other writers. In the story he often switches subjects and does not write about the same thing for very long due to Billy Pilgrim’s ability to time travel which he learned from the Tralfamadorians. Vonnegut also wrote with short choppy sentences which gives the reader a hard time to stay engaged with the story.

After reading this book I found that I did not like it at all. In the story Billy Pilgrim time travels to different points in his life very often which confused me as a reader because at times I did not know which point I was at in the story since he was talking about things that happened in his future and past every couple pages. I think that if Vonnegut kept this story more about Billy Pilgrim’s time he had in World War II I would have enjoyed it much more.