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Loading... Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)| 36,610 | 563 | 34 | 
(4.11) | 1 / 883 | Billy Pilgrim returns home from the Second World War only to be kidnapped by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore, who teach him that time is an eternal present. |
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 Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. ▾Conversations (About links) » Add other authors (7 possible) | Author name | Role | Type of author | Work? | Status | | Kurt Vonnegut | — | primary author | all editions | calculated | | Brioschi, Luigi | Translator | secondary author | some editions | confirmed | | Chesterman, Adrian | Illustrator | secondary author | some editions | confirmed | | Donkers, Jan | Afterword | secondary author | some editions | confirmed | | Ferrer, Jose | Narrator | secondary author | some editions | confirmed | | Franco, James | Narrator | secondary author | some editions | confirmed | | García de Miró, Margarita | Translator | secondary author | some editions | confirmed | | Hawke, Ethan | Narrator | secondary author | some editions | confirmed | | Hens, Gregor | Translator | secondary author | some editions | confirmed | | Holder, John | Illustrator | secondary author | some editions | confirmed | | Hoog, Else | Translator | secondary author | some editions | confirmed | | Jaskari, Juhani | Translator | secondary author | some editions | confirmed | | Jonason, Olov | Translator | secondary author | some editions | confirmed | | Mantovani, Vincenzo | Translator | secondary author | some editions | confirmed | | Nemes, László | Translator | secondary author | some editions | confirmed | | Pellizzari, Daniel | Translator | secondary author | some editions | confirmed | | Sutherland, John | Introduction | secondary author | some editions | confirmed | | Wagenseil, Kurt | Translator | secondary author | some editions | confirmed | | Zanon, Cássia | Translator | secondary author | some editions | confirmed | | Владимир Филипов | Translator | secondary author | some editions | confirmed |
▾Work-to-work relationships Is contained inThe sirens of Titan; Mother night; Cat's cradle; God bless you, Mr. Rosewater; Slaughterhouse-five by Kurt Vonnegut Novels & Stories, 1963-1973: Cat's Cradle / God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater / Slaughterhouse-Five / Breakfast of Champions / Stories by Kurt Vonnegut Slaughterhouse-Five ; The Sirens of Titan ; Player Piano ; Cat's Cradle ; Breakfast of Champions ; Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut Slaughterhouse-Five / Welcome to the Monkey House / Cat's Cradle / Jailbird by Jr. Kurt Vonnegut 5 by Kurt Vonnegut jr. (5 volumes) (Cat's Cradle, The Sirens of Titan, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, Welcome To The Monkey House, Slaughterhouse Five) by Kurt Vonnegut Cat's Cradle, God Bless You. Mr. Rosewater, Slaughterhouse-five by Kurt Vonnegut Has the adaptationIs abridged inHas as a commentary on the textHas as a student's study guide
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| Epigraph |
The cattle are lowing,
The Baby awakes.
But the little Lord Jesus
No crying He makes.  | |
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For Mary O'Hare and Gerhard Müller | |
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All this happened, more or less. | |
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Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops. There was a a soft drink bottle on the windowsill. Its label boasted that it contained no nourishment whatsoever. I have told my sons that they are not under any circumstances to take part in massacres, and that the news of massacres of enemies is not to fill them with satisfaction or glee. So it goes. Listen:
Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time. You know — we've had to imagine the war here, and we have imagined that it was being fought by aging men like ourselves. We had forgotten that wars were fought by babies. When I saw those freshly shaved faces, it was a shock. "'My God, my God — ' I said to myself, 'It's the Children's Crusade.'" All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is. Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I've said before, bugs in amber. 'We don't ever have to talk about it,' said Billy. 'I just want you to know: I was there.' How nice--to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive. The nicest veterans in Schenectady, I thought, the kindest and funniest ones, the ones who hated war the most, were the ones who'd really fought. Billy covered his head with his blanket again. He always covered his head when his mother came to see him in the mental ward - always got much sicker until she went away. It wasn't that she was ugly, or had bad breath or a bad personality. She was a perfectly nice, standard-issue, brown-haired, white woman with a high-school education.
She upset Billy simply by being his mother. She made him feel embarrassed and ungrateful and weak because she had gone to so much trouble to give him life, and to keep that life going, and Billy didn't really like life at all. There are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces. One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters. There isn't any particular relationship between all the messages, except that the author has chosen them carefully, so that, when seen all at once, they produce an image of life that is beautiful and surprising and deep. There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our books are the depths of the many marvelous moments seen all at once time. The master of ceremonies asked people to say what they thought the function of the novel might be in modern society, and one critic said, "To provide touches of color in rooms with all-white walls." Another one said, "To describe blow-jobs artistically." | |
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▾References References to this work on external resources.  Wikipedia in English (4)
▾Library descriptions No library descriptions found. ▾LibraryThing members' description
| Book description |
[R.L. 6.0]
From the World War Two firebombing of Dresden to the distant planet called Tralfamadore, the reader follows Billy Pilgrim in his attempt to understand the natures of time and existence. | |
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The book itself is still good, though. Worth a read, at least. (