Literary Anaylsis: Slaughter House 5

1.      1.. The plot is about a man named Billy Pilgrim and his life. Billy basically flashes back and forth from past, present and future. He first expiernces this, when he gets captured during WWII, where is whole life flashes before him. After that, the book goes from him meeting aliens called Tralfamadores who tell him that time and death aren't linear.  To his life as a wealthy doctor. Billy ends up realizing how he will die and accepts it, knowing that he'll just time travel back to another point in his life, where he will be alive. 

2. 2. The Theme of Slaughter house five, is that war is destructive not only physically, but also emotionally.

3. 3. The tone of this book is Satirical

• “If I hadn’t spent so much time studying Earthlings,” said the Tralfamadorian, “I wouldn’t have any idea what was meant by ‘free will.’ I’ve visited thirty-one inhabited planets in the universe, and I have studied reports on one hundred more. Only on Earth is there any talk of free will.”  It shows how humans are the only creatures that think "Free Will" exists. But it really doesn't.

• "And nobody held it against him that he dropped jellied gasoline on people. But they found his halitosis unforgivable." Funny how they say nothing about the gasoline, yet they get mad at his disease.

4. Symbols, motifs, tone, and irony

      One symbol in the book is when is Billy is talking about the colors of blue and ivory, he is basically describing how thin the line is between life and death, which is one of the basics of this book.  "blue and ivory claw
      There is also a motif in the book, where after talking about death, Vonnegut writes "so it goes on" this shows how it doesn't matter who dies, life still goes on. You can't beat death.