KURT VONNEGUT – SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE

Book Review from ViajeLiterario-AlohaCriticon

Billy Pilgrim travels, or he believes he travels, backward in time to his experiences in the Second World War, during the allied bombing on Dresden thanks to his contact with the Tralfamadorians.

Pilgrim is Kurt Vonnegut’s alter ego in this antiwar novel. A psychological study and autobiographical fiction in which the author, who was in the city during the war, introduces himself in an omniscient narrative using a critical approach to his present situation at that time ( Vietman), ironic sense of humour and science fiction details in the insanity of the witness of death and destruction.

Together with different metaphors, the writer uses surrealistic images, absurd situations and erratic time and space trips that remark the insane state of mind of the protagonist.

Vonnegut not only writes a war diatribe but also deals with topics such as the futility of existence, determinism and the insignificance of the human being in a global context and the will to achieve, since the birds still tweet, happiness in life.

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