Death of Valencia Pilgrim in the Novel Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

SlaughterhouseFive is a book about the bombing of Dresden. The book describes the state of mind and life of a person who has experienced World War II. It is an anti-war book, Kurt Vonnegut, the author of Slaughterhouse-Five, has fused together various literary allusions in this book, some have been taken from the Bible and some are taken from other authors. One of the literary illusions that Mr. Vonnegut mentions is taken from the famous play Romeo and Juliet which was written by William Shakespeare.

This can be found when Mr. Vonnegut describes the death of Valencia Pilgrim. In chapter nine the tragic death of Billy’s wife Valencia has been mentioned in the book Slaughterhouse-Five. Billy Pilgrim is the main character of the book. As Valencia finds out that Billy’s plane has crashed on Sugarbush Mountain and he is in critical condition in Vermont hospital, she drives herself to the hospital while weeping.

She loves her husband and does not want to see him dead, while driving she gets into an accident because she misses the correct turnoff from the throughway as stated in chapter nine.

As she realizes this, she comes to a stop and a Mercedes slams into the trunk of her car. Without focusing on the accident, she starts drivrng again towards the hospital and when she reaches the hospital she gets unconscious because she was. overcome by carbon monoxide from the accident. After an hour she passes away. Kurt Vonnegut got this illuSion from the death of Romeo and Juliet.

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Juliet had faked her death so she wouldnt have to marry the man that her father wants her to marry. She does this so she could run away with Romeo aftenNards, Juliet sends Romeo a letter which contains all the details about her death. However, as Romeo finds out about the death, he rushes to see her and misses the letter.

As he gets there, he sees her lying dead in a coffin and drinks poison to kill him knowing that the love of his life has died. Juliet suddenly wakes up and realiZing that Romeo has passed away drinks poison too and dies. In Mr, Vonneguts story Valencia, Billys Wife. is in the shoes of Romeo. Valencia, hearing about her husbands life conditions, rushes to see him. although, she gets into an accident and dies herself. The incident of the death of Mrs. Pilgrim relates to many themes in the story. The most dominant theme that it relates to is the War. If the war was not going on, Billy would have not gotten on that plane thus, he would not have been injured in an airplane crash.

It also relates to the theme of life and death. The World War II took away many lives of people and Valencia was definitely one of them. Unfortunate Valencia was extremely innocent; she did not even deserve to die. She had done nothing wrong. She was only going to see her husband, whom she adored and that took her life away from her, Slaughterhouserfive is an extremely vivid book. It describes the pain that a soldier went through in the war. It uses many illusions from a variety of resources. so the reader can comprehend the story better. It has literary illusions from religion, books, and plays. Kurt Vonnegut uses the story that Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet. In which the death of Romeo is represented by the death of innocent Valencia.