I’m not at liberty to speak to Kurt Vonnegut. I will never know the exact reason he has created and published, Slaughterhouse Five. I am at the will of my own inferences and beliefs, all of which point me to believe that Vonnegut wrote this novel with the intention of deglamorizing every aspect of war.
In the body of the novel, Pilgrim states, “There is nothing to say about a massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want anything ever again. Everything is supposed to be quiet after a massacre, and it always is…” (Vonnegut 19) Reinforcing this statement is the fact that the novel was written and published during the Vietnam War, one of the least supported actions in American history. It is only logical that one would believe this is an antiwar novel based on the era in which it was published.
This novel actually reminds me very much of the modern movie “Across the Universe,” a movie in which the main characters express their protest of the Vietnam War through famous Beatles songs. It conveys the uselessness of war through dramatic yet matter of fact images of wounded soldiers, protest, etc, just as Vonnegut describes in his novel. Also a similar point between these two modes of expression is the ideal that the individuals shipped into the war are not grown adults, brave and noble at heart, but simply children, barely out of school, immature and naïve to the vast carnage of war.
