Slaughterhouse-Five Literature and Writing

If Vonnegut is writing a novel that is "pretty much true," why write it as fiction at all? What can fiction do that an autobiography can't? What kind of structural experimentation does writing about Dresden in a novel make possible?

First off, we think it's hilarious that the narrator starts off his quoting spree with a dirty limerick. Second, we find it intriguing that he feels almost compelled to write about Dresden, even though it's difficult, and even though it's taking up valuable real estate in his brain. How might writing itself be a form of therapy? What other reasons does the narrator give for needing to write about the Dresden firestorm? And what does this limerick mean, anyway?

The narrator talks about Edgar Derby's real-life execution as though it were a moment of dramatic irony, as though the real war were also the product of an author with a dark sense of humor.

The narrator talks about writing 5,000 pages of his Dresden novel before actually getting to Slaughterhouse-Five. What makes the event so hard for him to write about? He describes the normal things that go into a novel—"climaxes and thrills and characterization and wonderful dialogue and suspense and confrontations"—none of which Slaughterhouse-Five actually has. Why might a book filled with these things be precisely not what the narrator wants to write when tackling the topic of war?

The only sound left after a massacre is birdsong, so birds have the last word. Is this why the narrator also claims that his novel on Dresden must, inevitably, be a failure—because, in the end, there can simply be no words for such an event? Do you agree?

We have been talking about the "dance with death" as something soldiers must do. They have to come to terms with the fact that they may die at any time, without warning. Still, the narrator specifically quotes Céline as saying that "no art is possible without a dance with death." Where do we see this dance with death in Slaughterhouse-Five?

Slaughterhouse-Five probably comes about as close as anything we have read to a novel with "no beginning, no middle, no end, [and] no suspense." Do you find that the lack of chronological order interferes with your understanding of the book?

The Brothers Karamazov is a famous (and very long) realist novel that tackles themes of religion, family, crime, and punishment. Why does Rosewater feel that old stories involving these themes no longer describe the reality he and Billy live in?

Kilgore Trout is being facetious here by claiming that novelists are expected to write only the truth. At the same time, his novels, even if they are science fiction, tackle real and important subjects, such as greed, faith, and morality. With Slaughterhouse-Five, it seems to us that Vonnegut is claiming that many of the ideas expressed in fiction may not be literal or real, but they have a higher philosophical truth.

There really has been a discussion throughout much of the 20th century about the so-called death of the novel. Many claim that authors have lost faith in the idea that a person can be conscious of what he does or why he does it, and that we also no longer believe in the rigid, formal presentation of fiction as though it is real.

Slaughterhouse-Five itself experiments with new ways of presenting personal motivation and narrative time without throwing away the novel as a form. So we think Vonnegut is being kind of tongue-in-cheek here by showing all of these pretentious answers to a question about the value of the novel... inside a novel.