Slaughterhouse-Five an Analysis of Vonnegut's Essay

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I enjoyed Vonnegut's commentary on the strangeness of humankind's foibles and I was not shocked by some of his matter-of-fact depictions. Indeed, when Vonnegut draws on his own real-life experiences, the novel takes on an air of authenticity. This authenticity coupled with Vonnegut's wry, black humor makes the novel seem caustic and ironic, but at heart it is neither -- it is simply a record of things both real and imaginary told with the same kind of remove that Voltaire employs as he pushes Candide along on his ridiculous adventures.

I hesitate to say that I was enlightened by reading the novel. I might say I was as enlightened as I was entertained, and cannot say I found it to be the most entertaining novel I have ever read. The non-linear narrative is so full of false-starts and proceeds in fits that it is difficult to truly become engaged in it. Whatever enlightenment is gleaned must be gleaned at a remove, just as Vonnegut writes a remove.

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That said, reading "So it goes," after every time a death is reported is amusing at first, but the joke quickly wears thin.

I do not believe I am a better person for reading it. If anything I am probably aware of being a worse person. That of course is no judgment on the novel -- after all, great novels tend to let us realize how inefficient we are when it comes to behaving humanly. Whether it is possible to behave well or rightly is a question the novel poses -- but it is difficult to answer the question within the confines of the novel, for Vonnegut posits it between the tweeting of a bird and the fatal awareness of death just around the corner.

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