“I asked myself about the present. How wide it was, how deep it was, how much of it was mine to keep?” 

Vonnegut’s ‘Slaughterhouse Five’ is hailed as one of the great anti-war stories, focusing on the firebombing of Dresden from the perspective of American POW Billy Pilgrim. However, as Vonnegut himself remarks in the book, to be anti-war is alike to being anti-glacier. The violence and death is inevitable and unpreventable therefore speaking against it is futile. He however attempts to nonetheless. 

The first quarter of this book was brilliant. It was written from Vonnegut’s perspective, as a struggling writer attempting to write a story about the firebombing he experienced but failing to make anything out of it. It is in a confused and absurdist mind with nursery rhyme weaved in (huge pro on my part!) to illustrate how the Second World War was really a Children’s Crusade. This perspective however soon switched when Vonnegut became the protagonist of the novel he was trying to write, Pilgrim. 

The catch here is that while Pilgrim shared Vonnegut’s experiences of the war, he is also able to time travel after a plane crash and is taken by an alien species called Tralfamadorians who exhibit him in a zoo of sorts. I will also note that every single death is followed by “so it goes…”, addressing the alien attitude to life always existing in another time but also therefore very muted to the concept and consequences of death. I liked something about this take it at the same time it feels wrong to do so? The book loses its absurdism confusion and becomes more incoherent science fiction confusion which just wasn’t anywhere near as good as how it started in Vonnegut’s perspective.