One of the most acclaimed science fiction novels ever written is Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five. It is also one of the most weird books I have ever read. The novel takes place in many different settings, and jumps back and forth between these places several times. Also, the novel is not written chronologically. The spasms between space and time can be very difficult to understand, and this does have a drawback on the strength of the novel.
Billy Pilgrim is an American soldier in World War II. Also, he randomly and uncontrollably travels through space and time. He could be inside a slaughterhouse as a prisoner of war in Dresden, and then be on the planet Tralfamadore inside of the zoo, and then be in his future as an optometrist, and then be in his past as a six-year-old. Because of this unpredictability, Billy as a narrator is often unreliable, and the reader never truly can separate fact from fiction.
Two of the major themes present in the novel are those of death and time. Whenever someone died on the planet Tralfamadore, the Tralfamadorians would say, "So it goes," suggesting that death was in the ordinary course of events. Vonnegut uses this expression as well. Whenever the novel says something about a death in the war or elsewhere, he says "So it goes." This is to lessen the pain of death. Another philosophy of the Tralfamadorians is that every moment has always existed, exists now, and always will exist. This is the fourth dimension that they can view. This is the basis for Billy's time travel, as he does not really go back in time, because every moment that has existed exists now.
Vonnegut had a very unique idea when he set out to write this story. The concept of traveling unwillingly and unexpectedly in time must have been a very unusual one at the time. The only fault with this (and it is a major one) is that it is too confusing. Vonnegut definitely did the best he could with the basic details, but it was not enough to make the novel more than a good attempt. While it is not a bad novel, it is certainly not as good as other classics of science fiction, such as Foundation and Ender's Game. Read this if you choose, but do not put it first on your list.
Grade: 6.5
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