Slaughter House Five

Slaughter House Five

  • Submitted By: brianga
  • Date Submitted: 12/04/2008 1:53 PM
  • Category: Book Reports
  • Words: 907
  • Page: 4
  • Views: 488

There are many types of corrective instruments in the world. Things to help one see better, hear better, feel better, look better, all for the sake of the society that is spending all it’s time improving itself as well. Perhaps if everyone were simply to put aside their vanity and look at their surroundings, far more could actually be corrected. In Kurt Vonnegut’s novel, Slaughterhouse Five, a major theme is the fact that in order to see what needs to be seen, everything that is supposedly helping sight needs to be discarded. Slaughterhouse Five is basically an anti-war novel, written by Kurt Vonnegut. which aforementioned theme of this novel’s sight is stressed during Billy’s time with the Tralfamadorians, Really, everything important happens during Billy’s time with the Tralfamadorians. They tell Billy that, “Earth is just a small bit of the universe and you shouldn't take yourselves so seriously.” (116-117) and also “Human vision is something so narrow and restricted...to convey to themselves what it must be like they have to imagine a creature with a metal sphere around his head who looks down a long, thin pipe seeing only a tiny speck at the end. He cannot turn his head around and he is strapped to a flatcar on rails which goes in one direction.” (93). The reason any wars happen is because of the fact that if every person in the world takes themselves or other people in this world too seriously, and sees their beliefs as more important, more correct than those of others, or jus plain being selfish with themselves, then there’s bound to be conflict. Conflict, furthermore, which lasts far too long on account of no one wanting to admit that they’re wrong. For this reason thousands of people die in war and not jus the soldiars but the civilians that get killed by accident. "When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in a bad condition in that particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments....

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