So I'm a little late in posting. I actually finished this book a few weeks ago but due to other awesome things keeping me busy, I haven't found the time to post until now.
The book: Slaughterhouse Five, or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death
The author: Kurt Vonnegut
Trust me, not nearly as gruesome as it sounds. When I had this book with me during my break at work I got some kind of crazy looks and comments to which I had to reply, "It's not gross and it's not about the Texas Chainsaw Massacre." Then they would pretty much either roll their eyes or give a sigh of relief. This is actually an anti-war book. Go figure! But I was hoping you might have figured that from the "Children's Crusade" part of the title.
The most basic gist of the plot that I can give is this: One man retells the bombing of Dresden, Germany through one of his fellow POW's perspective. Both men experience severe PTSD and have difficulty moving forward with their lives without looking back as well.
I thought this book was totally fiction but after a little research discovered that there was a Dresden, Germany that was bombed at the end of WWII in 1945. Some reports say that it killed as many if not more than the bombing of Nagasaki, Japan. That author claims that some parts of the personal stories are true as well, so I'm going to side with him and say that they are too.
I was a little skeptical reading an "anti-war" book. I just knew it was either going to be laced with a political agenda or be full of hippies dancing around doing LSD and saying "War is sad, man!" But really in its simplest form this book is just saying that war hurts. No obvious political activism or discreet hippies.
There was one part of the book that I found particularly interesting. The main character, Billy, says that he was abducted by aliens and they showed him that humans see life all wrong. Humans see life as a time line, continuing on chronologically until death and then it's over. But the aliens see that living goes on forever because moments don't just happen and then disappear. They are always happening and never end, and there is no chronological pattern to events. I had to wonder what this idea had to do with the book and I honestly had no clue...until I looked it up. Yes, I'm such a cheater. Oh well. Vonnegut was big on fatalism, apparently he had some sort of connection to it in each of his books. Fatalism is essentially the idea that fate and pre-determination exist and are indeed inescapable. This being known it makes the alien knowledge of time a little easier to understand. According to Vonnegut, events will always happen no matter what, the bombing of Dresden happened and would have happened even if it was seen into the future and people wanted to stop it, it would have occurred anyway. This is loosely just my interpretation (and I'm crossing my fingers that it's right!).
From all of this I'm going to say that from my not so professional opinion this book is simply saying war is bad and horrifying and awful...and unavoidable. So long as there are humans, there will be war. "So it is" as Vonnegut repeated in the book. But just because it is doesn't mean it's good. So there, that is what it is. If you're going to read this book here's a disclaimer: It's not gruesome and gory but there is quite a bit of language and...references. But if you are one who can see past that then this is probably an A- book on my list. Not my favorite but still quite enjoyable.
The book: Slaughterhouse Five, or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death
The author: Kurt Vonnegut
Trust me, not nearly as gruesome as it sounds. When I had this book with me during my break at work I got some kind of crazy looks and comments to which I had to reply, "It's not gross and it's not about the Texas Chainsaw Massacre." Then they would pretty much either roll their eyes or give a sigh of relief. This is actually an anti-war book. Go figure! But I was hoping you might have figured that from the "Children's Crusade" part of the title.
The most basic gist of the plot that I can give is this: One man retells the bombing of Dresden, Germany through one of his fellow POW's perspective. Both men experience severe PTSD and have difficulty moving forward with their lives without looking back as well.
I thought this book was totally fiction but after a little research discovered that there was a Dresden, Germany that was bombed at the end of WWII in 1945. Some reports say that it killed as many if not more than the bombing of Nagasaki, Japan. That author claims that some parts of the personal stories are true as well, so I'm going to side with him and say that they are too.
I was a little skeptical reading an "anti-war" book. I just knew it was either going to be laced with a political agenda or be full of hippies dancing around doing LSD and saying "War is sad, man!" But really in its simplest form this book is just saying that war hurts. No obvious political activism or discreet hippies.
There was one part of the book that I found particularly interesting. The main character, Billy, says that he was abducted by aliens and they showed him that humans see life all wrong. Humans see life as a time line, continuing on chronologically until death and then it's over. But the aliens see that living goes on forever because moments don't just happen and then disappear. They are always happening and never end, and there is no chronological pattern to events. I had to wonder what this idea had to do with the book and I honestly had no clue...until I looked it up. Yes, I'm such a cheater. Oh well. Vonnegut was big on fatalism, apparently he had some sort of connection to it in each of his books. Fatalism is essentially the idea that fate and pre-determination exist and are indeed inescapable. This being known it makes the alien knowledge of time a little easier to understand. According to Vonnegut, events will always happen no matter what, the bombing of Dresden happened and would have happened even if it was seen into the future and people wanted to stop it, it would have occurred anyway. This is loosely just my interpretation (and I'm crossing my fingers that it's right!).
From all of this I'm going to say that from my not so professional opinion this book is simply saying war is bad and horrifying and awful...and unavoidable. So long as there are humans, there will be war. "So it is" as Vonnegut repeated in the book. But just because it is doesn't mean it's good. So there, that is what it is. If you're going to read this book here's a disclaimer: It's not gruesome and gory but there is quite a bit of language and...references. But if you are one who can see past that then this is probably an A- book on my list. Not my favorite but still quite enjoyable.
1 comment:
Sounds interesting. You should read The Book Thief. A very interesting read with a different perspective (the narrator of the book is Death).
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