The Horrors of War in Slaughterhouse-Five, a Novel by Kurt Vonnegut

War not only destroys buildings and kills many people, but also gives a tremendous impact on the rest of the world and the people who had to endure the journey. In Slaughterhouse- Five Vonnegut best demonstrates this by the bombing of Dresden, Billy’s interactions with the Tralfamadorians, and his repetition of “So it goes,” According to Spiegel Online International, the bombing of Dresden was said to have taken the lives of so many people, up to half a million in 1945 and 60 years later they’ve finally estimated the correct number is no more than 25,000.

Yet, even with the numbers significantly smaller then they thought before, the amount of destructiveness is still the same and ongoing. The bombing of Dresden destroyed a massive city and killed many innocent civilians just to try to win the war.

Before the bombing, Vonnegut described Dresden as “..,the loveliest city that most of the Americans had ever seen The skyline was intricate and voluptuous and enchanted and absurd, It looked like a Sunday school picture of Heaven to Billy Pilgrim.

” (Vonnegut 148). Vonnegut also referred to it as, “Oz.”After the bombing, the imagery had changed significantly describing it as, “They [the buildings] had collapsed, Their wood had been consumed, and their stones had crashed down, had tumbled against one another until they locked at last in low and graceful curves. “It was like the moon,” said Billy Pilgrim. Before the war had consumed Dresden, it was a place of wonder and magnificent sights, Something that looked so lovely that people dreamed about it and saw pictures of it.

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After the destruction hit, Vonnegut describes with great imagery the scene left behind, his simile comparing it to the moon describes the setting as lonely and empty Nothing left to gawk at, craters implanted on the soil, and silent.

The war had destroyed lives, families, homes, implying that the war damages tangible objectst Billy’s interactions with the Tralfamadorians gives an insight on what war causes inside one’s mind Vonnegut writes, “The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral” Vonnegut’s injection of these toilet plunger shaped aliens gives us a sense that Billy is so distant from reality that he created his own Another way to look at it is: when a soldier goes to war he sees his comrades and enemies die. They see human beings, being slaughtered by militia and bullets To come at peace with these deaths Billy learns from the Tralfarnadorians that they never truly die and they’re sound “Experts think PTSD occurs in about 30% of Vietnam Veterans, or about 30 out of 100 Vietnam Veterans,” according to Us Department of Veterans Affairs.

The trauma brought upon Billy is not rare and is very frequent in people who have participated in war implying that war destroys the minds of those who were involved in the fight After every death Vonnegut writes in his novel, he has a saying, “So it goes.” With this repetitive motif in almost every chapter you read, it is hard not to connect it with war damage. Billy has witnessed many deaths and they each die in a different way, but they all have the same meaning. Death is inevitable, it has no meaning With Billy being in the war, he thinks that no death can be justified because the war has made it all too familiar. As Vonnegut explains.

“Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of Heaven, and he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground“ and dying in war “ corpses with bare feet that were blue and ivory” are both the same. With these comparisons he implies that war destroys meaning to be alive Vonnegut uses Billy’s experiences and thoughts to show that war causes destruction not only to what you can see, but in people’s minds as well War turned a beautiful city into nothing but empty, quiet space. It stays in people’s minds forever traumatizing many and not allowing people to think clearly. It gives a sense that anybody’s life has no meaning once they’re dead and nothing matters after that. War is everywhere. In ourselves, between nations, and no matter how large the casualties are there will always be destruction left behind.