Slaughterhouse-Five is clearly an antiwar novel. All of Billy’s stories of war point out the bad aspects of people and life. He exemplifies death, murder, and the disgusting parts of human nature. Kurt Vonnegut repeats the phrase “so it goes” several times—always after death. He said Edgar Derby was killed in the war because he stole a tea pot… so it goes. He is always looking at war in a calm point of view, but at the same time disgusted. Vonnegut does not go into detail because everyone dies and not much matters when you are in a war. No one cares that you have a family or money back home, all they care about is winning for their country. The novel also points out that all those who are in the war are babies. He states that it is a “children’s crusade,” and the men do not all know what they are doing. The novel does not have a consistent structure. It is all jumbled up because nothing is really that significant and nothing will matter once something else happens. War is inevitable and will happen in every modern civilization. Kindness is the key to human nature.

#3: the significance

I think the significance of telling the story out of order is to show how crazy and out of order Billy Pilgrims life is. In the story Billy goes back in time a lot and when he does go back in time it isn't in order, that is another reason why the story is written out of order. KV chose this way of writing this story because that's the way he sees his life and the way other people see it. KV says so it goes after someone dies, he says this because Billy doesn't believe in time, so when someone dies they just die, there is no certain time they die at.

Question 3 SH5

The significances of telling the story out of order is that it shows that there is no time and the story doesn't have a beginning, end or middle. Its like a Tralfamadore story, no matter if its in order or not they always see it in order, the whole thing the right way. To the humans the book is out of order and it jumps randomly and they cant see it all at once. It was also chosen to not be in order because it showed that there was no time and everything is happening at once. When he would skip from time to time it would either be in a random moment or when he didn't want to experience something again, like the plane crash. Kurt Vonnegut wrote this story mixed up because he didn't believe in time, he is Billy Pilgrim in the book. KV made a character that is him but has a different name and there is one time in the book where he breaks character. This book also shows that you never die, like the Tralfamador say that they may be dead but there still alive somewhere. This book was not about showing how bad the war was cause he would say "So it goes" after anyone or anything would die, he didn't go into detail about it. Which made you think about it but not really get the full effect. This book was defiantly a anti-war book.

!!!QUESITON 3!!!

In Slaughterhouse Five the structure of the story is out of order primarly to show how time doesn't matter. Kurt Vonnegut chose this structure because he beleives time is pointless. He lives his life not depending on time. He is Billy Pilgrim in the book, and Billy also doesn't follow time. Time should not dictate when we do things, they should just happen. That is how Billy's life was, and he couldn't control it. His whole life was planned out, he knew what he was going to do, and he had no option of when to do it. He only went through the motions already knowing the outcome. The phrase "so it goes" was said after every death in the book. This relates to the concept of time because death is unaviodable, and is supposed to happen without any control. Most people can't control their death. It just is. Billy believed that after you died, you were still alive. You were still living in the past, and were constantly reliving memories. You never really died, you just stopped making new memories, and focused on the old ones. The fact that people base their lives on time, doesn't make sense to him. Everything will happen the way it is supposed to, and people should just go through the motions, not caring what section of time they are in. The structure of this book is cut into many sections to portray that everything happens, and at the time it might not make sense because settings are changing so often, but in the end it will all come together and finally makes sense. The second part of telling the story out of order is to show his emotions about the war. It was the worst time of his life, and he doesn't want to dwell on it for chapters and chapters. Instead of him talking pre war, war, and post war, he jumbles it up so you only read short summaries of the war. If he told page after page about bombings and murdering it wouldn't be as significant because we would get used to it. When he suddenly travels from Tralfamadore to the war, you get more a shock. The book was trying to make an impact on the readers, and send an anti-war message.

and then there's fate..

       The idea of fate versus free will is a very complex and controversial topic. In this novel, the Tralfamadorians say that humans are the only life-form in the galaxy that believe in free will. However, when the outer-worldly beings look at someone, they see their entire life; past, present, and future. Therefore, there is no such thing as free will, because everything is already set in stone. The author of Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut, believes that time is an irrelevant creation of man. Kurt Vonnegut, like the Tralfamadorians, doesn't believe in free will. When Vonnegut was a teenager he was stripped of all of his free will and thrown into the front lines of a war. This is why he decided to write a science fiction novel based off of a character who also has no free will, visited by aliens that reinforce the fact that nothing can be changed about his past because his future has already happened.

Question 3

Kurt Vonnegut wrote Slaughterhouse 5 in a circular structure.The reader knows its end from the start, and the parts are filled in, from all segments of his life, as the Novel progresses. The author cannot use the usual linear narration because the book conforms with the idea of the effect of time, and how time doesn't matter in our lives.Especially because of the firebombing in Dresden and the killing of thousands and thousands of innocent people Vonnegut needs a form that does not appear to rationalize the events. He needed something like a fourth dimension.He tries to show us with this that each character is its own history, not something that exists and has history. Also with the phrase "So it goes" Kurt Vonnegut tries to tell us in an ironic way how dead people are just in a bad condition in this moment but in many other moments they are just fine. So it goes also shows us that the author saw so many people dying in World War 2 that if he would cry about every single one like we do, he wouldn't have any joy in life anymore. So it goes.

question 2

Slaughterhouse-five has a lot to do with fate and free will. It is saying that free will really doesnt exist. Fate is Fate you cant change it. He didnt want to go to war but his fate sent him to war. Our desicions are fated we do make the choices we make but from the beginning our fate is chosen. if we were ever to go back in time we couldnt change it because its fate. free will does not exist in anyway we are all fated to live the life we live and to die when we do, that is just fate.

Fate vs. Free Will

Free will is only what we make it to be therefore it really does not exist. "The creatures were friendly, and could see in four dimensions. They pitied Earthlings for being able to only see three. They had many things to teach Earthlings especially about time." (page 33) Because the Tralfamadorians could see in four dimensions their outlook on things were altered and to them, we humans look more like centipedes. When they look at a person they see "legs of ones life time." It's hard to explain or put into words, but they see several of our heads, like they see one as a baby, on as a toddler, one as a teen... get the picture?

Because they can see a human's whole life time with one glance, free will does not and will not ever exist. Billy Pilgrim does not have free will because he time travels around his life time and knows, understands, and relives his death.
Fate vs. free will is a very strong and/or confusing statement. Humans don't really have much choice to choose our fate, and free will is all about choosing what way you to go. If there was no fate then here would be loads of free will.

#2

Every day you are faced with decisions. What clothes you are going to wear, what you’re going to do or what you’re going to eat it’s your free will to choose. However your decisions will affect your fate. According to the Tralfamadorians, only on Earth is there talk of free will, since they think humans; mistakenly think of time as a linear progression. The Tralfamadorians explain to Billy that there is no such thing as free will and that Earthlings only believe there is free will because they cannot view time as the fourth dimension. Throughout Billy's life he encounters many things that test his free will. When Billy is a child, his father lets him drowned in the deep end of a pool in order to teach him how to swim. However against his free will to stay there, he is rescued. Also, Billy is drafted into the war against his will. When Billy time travels and sees his own death, he chooses not to mess with it. He knows he’s going to die, and he doesn’t want to change fate. This is much like Kurt Vonnegut, because he dose not believe in the concept of time, and thinks everything happens for a reason. Kurt Vonnegut also says that there is no such thing as free will. It does not exist because we choose what we want, and that is basically fate.

Question 3

The book is written out of order to say that there is no such thing as time. It is significant because it says that the past, present, and future are all happening, always will be happening, and always have been happening. He decided to write his novel in this order because he is making the argument that there is no such thing as time. With the book going out of order the reader realizes that a story does not need to have one event flow right after another in order to be understood. Because all time is constantly occurring, Billy is able to travel to any point in his life. Billy says “so it goes” every time somebody or something dies. He says this because when somebody dies this is the way that it was meant to be. The person is still alive in the past but they are dead now and in the future. It is just the way time works; there is nothing anyone can do about it so he just says “so it goes.”

Question One

From the very beginning, Slaughterhouse-Five is a unique novel in the sense that its message is not the typical anti-war message. Vonnegut does not give his opinion or say war is wrong. In contrary, he describes the bombing as beautiful. Vonnegut simply gives the facts of what happened to inform the reader, and says “so it goes” after all the deaths because there is nothing we can change. I am sure living through something as horrible as the bombing of Dresden caused Vonnegut to have many emotions that are hard to deal with. He wants to get the point across that war is inevitable, that no society is capable of having utopia. Therefore, Vonnegut does not go into much detail about the deaths and instead focuses on specific memories that trigger other emotions. In the novel, no one is heroic or evil; everyone is equally unimportant. The “good guys” sometimes die and no one person really has any significance in the big scheme of things. Vonnegut also describes the soldiers, himself included, as babies because war is childish and foolish in many ways. The tone is very straightforward because Vonnegut does not want to deceive the reader or make things seem better than they are. The story lacks a structure for the most part. I think this is because time does not really matter. There will always be problems, whether it is war or not, in the past, present, and future. The main message I picked up from Vonnegut’s novel was to focus on the good times in life because no matter how bad things are at the moment they will be better at some point.

Slaughter House Five: Question 2

In the novel, it is believed that there is no such thing as free will. Billy does not have the choice of deciding what to do next or where he is going to travel in time and when. The Tralfamadorians believe in this because of how they see the fourth dimension, but they also say that Earthlings are the only ones who believe in free will because they do not see time like this. Earthlings think that everything they do is their choice, but according to the Tralfamadorian's, because they can't see the fourth demention, these events have always happened and will always happen, but they just don't realize it. In a way, everything that all living creatures do is fate because it is all played out even before that life had been created. Throughout Vonnegut's life, he has been put through many situations that he never wanted to be in, like the war and the bombing of Dresden. All of these events morphed his view on life and led him to believe in the idea that there is no free will.

Question 1

Slaughterhouse 5 is one of the most interesting anti-war novels that has been written to date. Kurt Vonnegut never made anyone in the war a hero, or a bad guy, they were all just normal people. Because all of the characters were just normal people, when they die, the readers look at the death and start to realize that it was senseless; that many of the soldiers died for pointless reasons, and for a needless cause. He also just gives all the facts, there is no embellishment, everything is simple, and everything is the truth. As a reader you come to understand not the elaborate heroes war, but the actual “children’s crusade”, was terrible, and caused the deaths of many people who should have lived. From his tone you get the feeling that he was very emotional about war, and that it is very hard for him to look back on those days. “So it goes”, might be one of the most important lines in this book in terms of conveying the anti-war message. Whenever anyone dies, whenever something senseless or horrible happens, he uses “so it goes” so that he does not need to go into any more detail than necessary. Overall this book couldn’t strike you as anything other than an anti-war novel.

Queston uno

Slaughterhouse-Five, portrays a perfect anti-war novel, showing the true face of war, not just the epic version that the government shows us today. It shows how scary war really is, how unpredictable is can be, how mercilous and destructive the military can be. The fact that the book was going to be named The Childrens Crusade, shows that children, not much older then we are, have to face these war horrors when not yet matured, or ready to kill. Slaughterhouse-Five also shows how unpredictible war can be with its skipping around of story, since Billy skips around to find himself is a messed up position with no idea of how he got there. The situations in war are not how they seem on T.V. in reality. The POW's during the war were put through the worst situations, but in reality, this is what war is really like, and Kurt Vonnegut does an extreme job of telling this. All of this added up, makes every single word in Slaughterhouse-Five, make you think twice about going to war.

Question 3

Kurt Vonnegut wrote Slaughterhouse 5 out of order to show how time no longer exists to Billy Pilgrim. Billy has to live moments in his life randomly and out of order because he has become unstuck in time. He might be in the forest with the 3 musketeers at one moment, then reliving his abduction by Tralfamadorians in the next. Vonnegut also wrote his book in the same style as the Tralfamadorians, who'se books have no story structure and are out of order because they don't beleive in time. The Tralfamadorians also say that Earth is the only planet that has the concept of "free will" because they beleive in time and dont realize that their lives are determined by fate, and that everything has always and will always happen the same way. An example of this is how the Universe ends. The Tralfamadorians are experimenting with new rocket fuels and push a button, then the Universe ends. Billy asks if they can stop the Universe from ending, but they say that the button will always be pushed. This is why Vonnegut says "so it goes" every time a person dies because they were always going to die at that moment in time and it could not be prevented. This is also shown by the way that Billy relives his life. He goes to a moment in time, but he has to relive it in the same way because he cant change anything. If he had the ability to change something, than it would always have been changed and all the later events in his life would always have been different, which would not be possible because he is constantly reliving those events the same way they were originally, so he couldn't have changed them earlier.

Question 1

Slaughterhouse-Five is said to be an anti-war novel because it is based on characters and society that are not concerned about war. The tone shows how the war events happened and could not be changed, and how the characters just move on with their lives, focussing on the good things that happen. Vonnegut succeeded in focusing on the views of the anti-war society in the world, trying to teach that if we, society, deny war importance and move on with our lives, the past mistakes/events will not repeat themselves in the future.

Prompt number one

Vonnegut's way of presenting Slaughterhouse V as anti-war is extremely unorthadox, but it is still without question an anti-war novel. It is strange how he presents death as almost a non-issue, yet the only reason war is so strongly opposed is because it grants death en masse. Vonnegut makes us see war at a very different perspective than we normally do, in a simplistic, peaceful manner of writing, the opposite from what we would expect in an anti-war novel, where grim descriptions and focus upon the horror of it all should be prevelant. Billy is even indifference to everything going on around him, stating the one time he cries during the war is when he looks at how bad the horses are treated. He never sheds a tear for the thousands killed above him when he is hiding in the meat locker, and this is Vonnergut stating on the condition of the human spirit and war's effect on it. He is saying that you get to a point where the horrors of war stop effecting you, being just another everyday occerance, but you can still be moved by something as poor treatment to horses. Overall the book is very much anti-war, the way it is presented as such is just very subtle.

!!!QUESTION 3!!!

In Slaughterhouse Five the structure of the story is out of order primarly to show how time doesn't matter. Kurt Vonnegut chose this structure because he beleives time is pointless. He lives his life not depending on time. He is Billy Pilgrim in the book, and Billy also doesn't follow time. Time should not dictate when we do things, they should just happen. That is how Billy's life was, and he couldn't control it. His whole life was planned out, he knew what he was going to do, and he had no option of when to do it. He only went through the motions already knowing the outcome. The phrase "so it goes" was said after every death in the book. This relates to the concept of time because death is unaviodable, and is supposed to happen without any control. Most people can't control their death. It just is. Billy believed that after you died, you were still alive. You were still living in the past, and were constantly reliving memories. You never really died, you just stopped making new memories, and focused on the old ones. The fact that people base their lives on time, doesn't make sense to him. Everything will happen the way it is supposed to, and people should just go through the motions, not caring what section of time they are in. The structure of this book is cut into many sections to portray that everything happens, and at the time it might not make sense because settings are changing so often, but in the end it will all come together and finally make sense.

Question # 3

The reason that Kurt Vonnecut wrote Slaughter House-Five out of order is because he wanted to make the book complicated. When he wrote the book he made it so where you actually had to dig deep to understand the book. He already knew in his mind that the book would already be insane so, he made it even crazier. The saying "so it goes" basically means that things happen everyday and its a part of life thats the whole point of him saying "so it goes". The signifance of the book being out of order is that if you skipped a chapter then you will know that you skipped that chapter. This book is totally different than other books, by him making it out of order it pulls you into the book alot more. If he would have just made it a regular war type book then it would be just like the rest of them. He knew that his audience would have to really get into Slaughter House-Five so he made it scattered to catch their attention. Also he wanted to show how time doesnt really matter.Billys life was put in chronlogical order. I think that the main reason why the story is told ut of order is because the author wanted to show that all the things billy went through was a part of life in someway. Also that it doesnt matter how things happen because time is something that rolls naturally. Maybe time is suppose to be how we want it.Time itself doesnt matter its what you do with your time. When you hear the saying so it goes people usually use it when they talk about death or any part of life.

Question 2: Fate vs. Free Will

In the novel Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut expresses his belief that there is no such thing as free will. Free will does not exist because we choose what we choose, and that is simply fate. Having the right to choose is not defined as free will because if we ever went back, we would have to choose the same thing, because the moment is set up that way. In the novel, the Tralfamadorians explain to Billy that there is no such thing as free will and that Earthlings only believe there is free will because they cannot view time as the fourth dimension. Tralfamadorians are able to see everything that has ever happened to any object including other people, landforms, and stars. The Tralfamadorians know everything that has happened and everything that ever will happen, even the end of the universe. When Billy asks the Tralfamadorians why they don't stop the end of the universe they tell him that they can't, the moment is set up that way and it can never change. The Tralfamadorian who blows up the universe if fated to keep making the same decision.

Kurt Vonnegut, the author of Slaughterhouse-Five, tackled the basic question of human existence. He had gone through many things in his life, one of those being the firebombing of Dresden. Vonnegut never wanted to be put in many of the situations he was in, and the fact that he had no control over any of it shows that fate outs free will all together. Vonnegut altered realism in the novel to show human mistakes through other mediums. His ideals are directly represented throughout the book in Tralfamadores, Billy's uncontrollable time traveling, and crazy books created by is alter-ego, Kilgore Trout.

Question 3

The significance of telling the story out of order is that it is showing how that time doesn’t matter and how Billy Pilgrim is just trapped in a circle of time. It shows that there is no such thing as time and time has no point. Why do we even believe in time, what is the point? You will always go to work, and school at a curtain time, your future won’t change because you try and change time, your past, present, and future will always be the same no matter what. Kurt Vonnegut doesn’t believe in the concept of time, he feels that every minute that goes by is like an hour of his life passing by, into time he feels that time was a human creation that we have to follow. “There was nothing I could do about it. As an Earthling, I had to believe whatever clocks said and calendars.” Kurt Vonnegut says “so it goes” in the book after someone has died, he can’t do anything about it, it has happened and he cant change time, it is in the past.

Question 3.

The significance of telling the story out of order is to show that there is no such thing as time and that time doesn’t matter. There is no beginning, middle, or end to the story and KV wants people to understand his own idea of time. He thinks of time as a human creation that men took and twisted into a creation that people now live by everyday but is it real or is it just a figment of our imagination? To him time was almost as if someone was playing with clocks and they would make it twitch which lead to a passing of a year but KV believes it because he has to. But he himself believes that the past, present, and future are all now because all the events in your life are raveled together in the moment now and the future is the choices you make now therefore there is no such thing as time. All moments, memories, thoughts, and events are stuck in amber just as KV said in his book. These moments stay with us and are all bound around you as a person. The world really has no way of explaining time and the only reason we have it is because it’s how people live their lives everyday. They go to school at a certain times or plan to go to sleep at a certain times but what if we didn’t think about time? It is a good question but there aren’t really answers to this. This relates to the phrase “So it goes” because when KV uses “So it goes” it is always used after a death. In his book the Tralmafadorian’s don’t believe in the thought of death. They think of it as another moment of “now” because to them the person is and always will be alive for the rest of forever. Death is just another one of the many moments in a person’s life.

In this novel there is basically no freewill, everything happens for a reason which is described by fate. In the book Kurt Vonnegut is played by Billy Pilgrim and Billy is unstuck in time. He does not see the present. He jumps through time and sees everything and lives it all jumbled together. Billy resembles Kurt in the way that they do not care about time and do not see it. Kurt believes that life is important but time has no impact on their life. Billy sees hes birth and death all at the same time and he does not try to change what is going to happen because there is no freewill only fate. Billy knows how he is going to die and he isn't going to try and change it because of fate. Everything happens for a reason. Kurt believes the same thing and wants everybody to know that. Kurt also wants people to know what happened in Dresden and that is had to happen for a reason.

#3 significance of structure

Through out Slaughter House Five the events in the story are completely out of order, I think the author did this to show how irrelevant time is in our lives. Kurt Vonnegut wanted to prove his point of how time doesn't exist, events have always happened and always will happen, it doesn't matter when. Also, this structure supports the idea of how death is inevitable and actually a beautiful thing, it will always happen to everyone no matter what, when it happens is just an idea, it's always happened. This relates to the phase "so it goes" because everything that is going to happen will happen no matter what, so it goes on. In the beginning of the book Vonnegut pretty much tells you all that's going to happen because it doesn't matter when you find out, everything has always happened and always will. Time is non-existent and you see this through out this novel, because of unordered events and the casualty of death. So it goes.

riggs question 1

This novel goes through all the bad things that happen in war and how it affects the people the war. There are a lot of people that die and it shows how people react to it and how the become sad and dont want to fight anymore. It talks about how it was almost going to be called the childrens crusade because of how the are making kids fight wars and how it isnt right. All around the world kids are being drafted in to the war because there arnt enough adults to fight so the are brain washing kids and making them soilders. It shows POW's in there prisons how they suffer and have no fun and the only thing they were trying to do was protect there country but then they end up in a prisin cold and wet and wanting to kill them selfs.

Austin Anti-War

This whole book is anti-war. All throughtout the book Kurt shows his anti-warism. Calling the book the children's crusade is one way he shows his anti-warism. He believes that young, unexperienced people are the soldiers in the war. Kurt hates war because he thinks that the young and uneducated are involved in war. He thinks that there is no point for war but no matter what there will always be war. Overall the book shows through the bombing of Dresden, the P.O.W.s and the characters in war that war is a bad thing. It corrupts people who are involved in it and destroys innocent people that are effected by it.

Question #1

Slaughterhouse Five or The Children’s Crusade is one of the greatest “anti-war” novels of all time. It doesn’t have a hero, or a villain. The book doesn’t make war look glamorous or worth while. There is never any anticipation in the book, because you Vonnegut tells you everything that’s going to happen before hand. This is completely opposite from most war novels. Those books always want to keep you waiting in suspense for who will die or who will kill someone, or who will live. The book has no chronological structure. He tells you about the death of a person, and then doesn’t touch back on their life for chapters at a time. He is simply illustrating his belief that time is non-existent. It also make the reader see someone in the same sense the Tradaformalians see them, in death, at birth, at their moments of glory, and at their worst. They see everything at once. Vonnegut changes subject often. He goes from an anti-war novel to a science fiction novel, and back. He also changes though very often. He wrote in the same sense that someone thinks; completely random, and out of order.

Question number 1.

The tone that Vonnegut uses is a sarcastic tone all the time during slaughter house five. the anti war message in this book is that billy doesn't really care about life which relates to when soldier go back home they just don't care about life as much. Another thing that Vonnegut showed was that time is a big time during our life, billy dosent belive in time but in some parts of the book time becomes significant. Faith in this book is represented very well like when someone goes to war he dosent know is his going to survive or die. Faith is the main topic in this anti war message.


By: Luis Tavares

Question number 1.

KV Number 3

It was significant for Kurt Vonnegut to tell the story out of order because it doesn't matter which order it happens if it destroyed everything and there is no going back. It doesn't really matter what order he tells it in if it all happened. as long as you read the hole book then you are going to find out what happened. Kurt nay have chosen to structure the book this way because all books are structured the same way. He wanted to be different. In all other books the story is written in chronological order. Kurt thought that if it happened it didn't matter what order it was in. This relates to the phase "So it goes." because when ever someone dies it doesn't really matter how he dies if he is no longer in the world today. Kurt doesn't need to explain how they die if so many people do. If he went into detail to explain how everyone died the book would be twice as long. All that he is telling you that you need to know is that a lot of people died in Dresden. it doesn't matter how they died but that Dresden was a tragic event.