Slaughterhouse Five

by Kurt Vonnegut | Grades 11-12

Slaughterhouse-Five is one of the world's great anti-war books, centered on the infamous fire-bombing of Dresden. Billy Pilgrim has become "unstuck in time" and lives his life in non-sequential bits, cursed (or blessed) to relive his days as a WWII prisoner of war, his marriage, the death of his wife, and his abduction by the Tralfamadorians. Central to Vonnegut's novel is this burning question: How do we find meaning in the fractured segments of our own lives, especially in those moments so painful that we cannot let them go?