Slaughterhouse-five
The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death
- ISBN
- 0440180295
- Publisher
- Dell Publishing
- Published
- 1991
- Language
- English
- Pages
- 215
- Genre
- Fiction
About the book
In Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, the story follows Billy Pilgrim, an American soldier who survives the terrible firebombing of Dresden in World War II and becomes "unstuck in time," living different moments of his life out of order. Traumatized by war, Billy believes he is abducted by aliens who see time all at once, which helps him cope with death using his famous phrase, "So it goes." Vonnegut mixes science fiction, dark humor, and his own real-life wartime memories to show that war is not heroic, but a tragic loss of young lives that leaves lasting psychological scars.