Kurt Vonnegut s Slaughterhouse Five - 1901 Words

Kurt Vonnegut developed his view of America through a history of personal loss and trauma that was largely endured at the same time by his characters. As a child, Kurt Vonnegut lived in Indianapolis, Indiana, which he would use in many of his later novels. His father was a prominent architect, while his mother came from the family of a wealthy brewer. After the depression hit, his father lost his business and gave up, his mother became addicted to alcohol and prescription drugs. In his teen years, Vonnegut wrote for his high school newspaper and continued this interest when he went to Cornell. Vonnegut entered the army and was immediately captured by the Germans and sent as a POW to Dresden. While in Dresden, he was protected from the†¦show more content†¦Vonnegut died in April of 2007 after head injuries he sustained from a fall at his home a few weeks earlier. Vonnegut moved through life with contentious remarks on how he saw the human experience always relying on traumati c moments in his life as a backbone to how he should address the issues of the time. Kurt Vonnegut displays his view of America through his works, from major novels to lesser known short stories. Slaughterhouse Five, Vonnegut’s most well renowned novel, focuses on Billy Pilgrim, a decidedly unremarkable man with a remarkable story. Pilgrim suffered through the turmoil of World War II as a an American POW in Germany, spent time in a veteran’s hospital for mental illness, and had his view of the world destroyed after a supposed months long alien abduction. In his abduction, Billy is told that time is not linear, it all occurs at the same time, only to be experienced by people a sliver at a time, refuting the concept of free will, a concept held dear to Vonnegut. The bombing of Dresden and Billy’s time there during World War II are the center of focus as Pilgrim is thrown around his timeline around the time of his encounter with the Tralfamadorians, the aliens who abducted him. Cat’s Cradle focuses on the journey of Jonah, a writer attempting to research a fictional scientist who worked on the atomic bomb for his book. Jonah is put on a writing assignment in San Lorenzo, a fictional island nation that’s ruled by a dictator