Anti-War Farce Through Science Fiction
Kurt Vonnuget is one of the most unique writers to emerge in the 2nd half of the 20th century. All of his novels contain a blend of sarcasm, dark humor satire, criticism of society's many hypocricies, and the exposure of human foibles/shortcomings, enhanced by greed and resource mongering. In Slaughter-House Five Vonnuget uses the perspective of a time-traveling WWII veteran, Billy Pilgrim, who like Vonnuget witnessed the Dresden firebombings, as the medium to expose his view of the short-comings of human conflict. The novel is a tremendous exposure and criticism on the brutality and mind-numbing savagery of war. Even for survivors, life becomes a tale of shell-shocked incongruencies that plague the psycho-somatic foundation of a person, as illustrated in our protoganist, Billy Pilgrim. This is one of the great anti-war novels written in a completely unique format and structure.