So I finished reading Slaughterhouse-Five on Friday while I was stuck in an airport (ick) due to some summer thunderstorms (double ick) waiting to fly back home from a two day work conference (triple ick). When I finally arrived, Mr. kindly picked me up at the airport and we had an intellectual discourse on the highs and lows of SH5 on the way back. Mr. was so fired up, he missed our exit off the highway.
I didn’t hate SH5 but I didn’t love it either. I don’t like to over analyze books so I am going to leave it at this:
The theme of this book, in my opinion, is apathy. Billy Pilgrim, the main character, just doesn’t care about anything at all really, it doesn’t matter what he does, people die, people live, nothing he can do about it. The first thing I noticed in this book was that Vonnegut kept repeating the phrase “and so it goes”. It grated on my nerves and then I realized he was doing this every time someone died, which was a lot considering a good part of this book takes place during WWII when Billy is a POW during the bombing of Dresden. It was still annoying but I think the point of it was to emphasize not only how much death happens but eh, it happens to everyone, it’s going to happen to you, not much you can do about it. Once you see a lot of it, you become immune to its effect.
Although the book centrally takes place during WWII, as I mentioned above, Billy goes back and forth in time allowing you to view his life before and mostly after the war. Billy marries a wife he doesn’t love, takes a job because it’s there, and has two kids. Eventually, he is abducted by aliens. This is where the book fell apart for me a bit. I didn’t understand what the point was to the alien abduction. I didn’t understand if it was in his head or real or what? Even when he is abducted, he seems to shrug passing it off as “Eh, that’s life” and just accepts it.
I think the book can start some interesting dialogue. I can also see how you could analyze it over and over and over and see all kinds of things that may or may not have been intended by the author. I understand how Mr. could have embraced this book during his college years as being different and innovative. It’s not written in a standard sequential format and is definitely outside the realm of what most English classes would want to cover. It was less impactful for me (I think) because 1. I have a hatred of sci-fi and started to get annoyed the second aliens came into the picture 2. Mr. had hyped it up so I was really expecting to be wowed and 3. I was reading it at age 32 in the year 2010. I did tell Mr. that when I was 14 and read Catcher in the Rye, I loved it. But, I could see if I had picked it up now for the first time that I might not like it so much. In all honesty, I don't really remember much of why I liked it or what the book is about. I do remember that I thought Holden Caulfield was a really cool name and that is about it. I relate this experience to Mr.'s. A lot of what you love about a book rely on the time and circumstance of your reading it.
The bottom line on SH5, I am glad I read it but I don't think it's making my top 10. And no judgement on Billy Pilgrim's apathetic nature. That would be hypocritical considering the name of this blog.
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