Slaughterhouse-Five

By Kurt Vonnegut

A profound anti-war novel… probably will go down as one my favourite books ever.

The story follows Billy Pilgrim, a World War II soldier, and his experience as a POW during the firebombing of Dresden, Germany. It will be remiss of me to not mention it is based the author's real life experience. What made the novel so notable for me was:

The experiences of Billy unfold in a very non-linear way…. Time travel and contextual musings galore…very unusual… I think it is difficult to pull it off in a written format than a visual one (movies, tv shoes etc etc) ….I also thought it was ingenious how it is crafted such that time travel could be seen as a coping mechanism to escape his trauma.
The sci-fi elements of the novel will be appealing to any sci-fi nerd like myself- but the plot and context meshes very well together: Billy's abduction by the Tralfamadorians, an alien race that views time as nonlinear, meaning all moments exist simultaneously. The aliens see past, present, and future at once and so death is just another moment in an unchangeable timeline. Essentially Tralfamadorians are philosophical beings who teach Billy a new way to see existence for the sake of this novel.
I believe it was my first meta-fictional novel. The author blurs the line between reality and fiction, and I have been thrown off in more than one occasion. For example, the first chapter is written in first-person and reads like a memoir of Vonnegut's own life, before transitioning into Billy Pilgrim's story.
To expand on the metafictional part, he breaks the fourth wall multiple times. In Chapter 1, Vonnegut directly tells the reader about writing the book and his real experiences in Dresden. But then he inserts himself directly in Billy Pilgrims story- "That was I. That was me."………… or how he casually mentions he was there in the POW camp or certain war scenes with Billy. All of these feel jarring- but in a good way.
The novel has a very memorable phrase "So it goes" every time death is mentioned emphasizes the inevitability of death without any mourning or emotional appeal. In a way it reinforces the Tralfamadorian idea that death is just another moment in time.
The novel also provokes questions about free will and determinism. Billy adopts the mindset of Tralfamadorian belief that everything is predetermined. Although I am biased since I have (long before reading this book) and continue to indulge myself with determinism and fatalism, these questions whether humans have any real control over their lives or if events are already set in stone are poignant!
The author and by extension Billy and other POWs were housed in a slaughterhouse and it is a very powerful irony that they only could survive because of being sheltered there.
It is also ironic that Vonnegut, an ethnically German American whose parents denied him the language to help him assimilate, endured such traumatic experiences in Germany—facing his own ancestral people as his captors and foes.
I tend to veer towards ambiguity in storytelling. Vonnegut masterfully blends comedy with tragedy, using irony and absurd situations to critique war and human nature. I believe his anti-war message is even more powerful because it is presented through satire rather than direct condemnation.
Some interesting tidbits I got to know later: Kilgore Trout, the bizarre sci-fi writer whom Billy idolizes, is based on real-life sci-fi author Theodore Sturgeon! The very same Theodore Sturgeon after whom the Sturgeon's law is named after.

All in all, Slaughterhouse-5 is one of the most unique books I have read so far.