Slaughterhouse-Five
Kurt Vonnegut (1969)
“Written by a man who survived the firebombing of Dresden — and spent 23 years trying to find words for it. He finally decided the only honest response was: 'So it goes.'”
Short Summary
Billy Pilgrim, a hapless American POW, survives the Allied firebombing of Dresden in 1945 by hiding in an underground meat locker. He also time-travels uncontrollably through his own life, is abducted by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore, and learns that all moments exist simultaneously and free will is an illusion. Vonnegut frames all of this in an autobiographical first chapter in which he, the author, confesses he cannot write about Dresden — and then writes about it anyway.
Detailed Summary
The novel opens with Kurt Vonnegut himself as narrator. Chapter One is a metafictional confession: Vonnegut has been trying for twenty-three years to write about his experience as a POW in Dresden, Germany, where the Allied firebombing on February 13-14, 1945 killed approximately 135,000 people. He ...