The Themes of Slaughterhouse-Five :: Slaughterhouse-Five Essays

The Themes of Slaughterhouse-Five The moral of Slaughterhouse-Five is whatever you want it to be. That is the bag of the book. However, in his typically dark, sarcastic way, Kurt Vonnegut gives us several possible themes to explore. geniusness of the themes relates to the way in which Mr. Vonnegut presents the homophile life span. Through his writing, Mr. Vonnegut poses an ancient distrust Are we masters of our destiny, or are we simply pawns of fate? The intermediate through which Mr. Vonnegut presents this riddle is death. Death is the central point to which all put through in the book connects. The story is primarily about the death of 135,000 Ger universe civilians in the bombing of Dresden. The story is also about billy Pilgrim, a man who experiences death from every viewpoint, a man who survives many life-altering experiences, and does not change at all. Through death, Mr. Vonnegut examines free will, and refutes it. He shows death as meaningless. The casual treatment of death demonstrates the futility of free will in human life. The first mention of death occurs in the third sentence of the book. This homogeneous event is mentioned repeatedly throughout the book. Technically, the event occurs several times. Edgar Derby, a man that the main character, Billy Pilgrim, and Mr. Vonnegut both know, is caught taking a teapot out of the debris of Dresden. The three mens captives, the Nazi Germany Army, execute Mr. Derby. This happens after the bombing of Dresden. 135,000 German civilians, who had no real involvement with the war, were massacred all at once. Then one man is executed for taking a teapot. This kind of irony is the atomic number 82 tool of Mr. Vonnegut.The phrase So it goes, is perhaps the most famous prospect of Slaughterhouse-Five. Each time a death occurs, So it goes is repeated. The phrased is used indiscriminately, without regards to the sizeableness of or the number involved in the death. When Mr. Vonnegut mentions that Billys father was killed in a hunting accident, it warrants no more attention than a random punt that Billy saw hanged while he was in Dresden. The death of the 135,000 Dresden citizens calls for no more consideration than the death of a single hobo with whom Billy shares a train car as they and other prisoners of war take in to a prison camp.