"Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children’s Crusade" (1969) is an autobiographical novel by Kurt Vonnegut about the bombing of Dresden during World War II.
In chapter 18 of Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage, The Sexual Revolution, Vonnegut evaluates his works; "Slaughterhouse ..." he rated 5+ out of 5 possible. The book is among the top 100 best English-language novels written since 1923, according to Time magazine.
"And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep." ― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five
After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Kurt Vonnegut volunteered for the United States military and fought in World War II.
In 1944, he was captured during the German counter-offensive in the Ardennes and was sent to Dresden, where, along with other prisoners of war, he worked in a factory that produces malt syrup with vitamins for pregnant women. And it was in Dresden that Vonnegut was destined to acquire his worst military experience.
On February 13-14, 1945, he witnessed the bombing of Dresden by the Allied aircraft. Kurt Vonnegut was among the seven American prisoners of war who survived that day in Dresden. The prisoners were locked up at night in the idle city slaughterhouse number 5, and during the bombing they were taken to the basement, in which the meat carcasses were kept. There were almost no real bomb shelters in the city, since Dresden was not a strategically important target. Miraculously escaping death from his own planes, Vonnegut fully knew the horror of the war, when, together with other prisoners, he had to dismantle the ruins and pull out thousands of corpses from under the rubble.
Vonnegut was liberated by the Red Army in May 1945.
According to the writer, the bombing of Dresden was not caused by military necessity. Most of those killed in this operation were civilians, residential quarters were destroyed, architectural monuments were lost. Vonnegut, being undeniably against Nazism, does not admit that the defeat of Dresden was a "punishment" for the crimes of the Nazis. The novel was censored in the United States, it was included in the list of "harmful" books and withdrawn from libraries.
In the novel, anti-militaristic colors are clearly expressed, the powerlessness of a person in front of an endless and soulless world of evil and violence, suffering and senseless sacrifices is shown (the idea of the absence of any free will in the face of a story once and for all).
Vonnegut's stereotypes of "real men", "tough guys", "heroes", usually found in books about the war, are perverted to the point of absurdity and presented as a harsh parody in the images of prisoners of the British and Roland Weary, causing a wry smile. There is no division into “ours” and “enemies” - the Germans are shown as ordinary tortured people, incredibly tired of the war, like the Americans.
The actual bombing of Dresden is never shown in the novel, although the author says that the whole book is about it. Even the consequences of the bombing are described very vaguely. One gets the impression that Vonnegut is postponing the conversation about this, drowning in prefaces and episodes. In fact, he just has nothing to say. Wars in general and the bombing of Dresden in particular are seen by the author as monstrous nonsense that cannot even be adequately described. Vonnegut is unable to comprehend the disease of humanity, leading to wars, and his book freezes in the stage of design.
The bombing of Dresden remains in the novel exactly what it is - a black hole, an emptiness. Wrapped in word, emptiness would lose its status.
This article was sponsored by Vlad Gorny.
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