Slaughterhouse Five
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We wish the Tralfamadorians were as fun as they sound. But unfortunately, they're your garden variety kidnap-humans-and-torture-them type of alien.
| American Literature | 20th-Century American Literature All American Literature |
| Author | Vonnegut - Kurt Vonnegut |
| Early 20th-Century Literature | Early 20th-Century American Literature |
| Form | Novel |
| Language | English Language |
| Literature | American Literature |
| Themes | Fate and Free Will Foolishness and Folly Freedom and Confinement Literature and Writing Men and Masculinity Morality and Ethics Suffering Time War and Warfare |
Transcript
– just sound out>> to live and mate in their interstellar zoo. You won’t find that in
any history textbook.
What is going on with Billy's trips to Tralfamadore? Take a look at when this book is set.
It’s the 1960s. Everything is trippy and psychedelic, and chances are if you weren’t
listening to Yellow Submarine, you were thinking you lived in one.
It’s a tie-dye state of mind, you dig? Billy’s groovy visions are just a result
of the times. He doesn’t exactly have a firm grasp on reality.
However, despite Billy’s tenuous grasp on the real world, these spacey trips are very
real to Billy…
… and the Tralfamadorians teach him some valuable lessons…
Like how time is totally predetermined and unchangeable and there is no free will.
Yikes. That would have us crying ourselves to sleep in our cage… if being in a cage
didn’t have us crying already.
Maybe by valuable lesson we mean: bleak and depressing lesson.
Either way, who cares if it’s all in his head? As long as it’s him and not us.
Real or not, maybe it's all just one big metaphor.
The Tralfamadorians are a lot like the Germans during World War two, except without the funny
little Charlie Chaplin mustache that Hitler ruined for everyone.
These aliens strip Billy of his choices… and his clothes…
…Take him captive, and make him subject to their rules and their reality.
He’s trapped like an animal in a zoo. They make him relive his World War two experience,
and there's nothing he can do to stop it. It’s the sci-fi version of post-traumatic
stress disorder.
If Billy was an actual monkey, instead of a human experiment, PETA would not be happy
about this. Back to reality, everyone. Buckle your seatbelts.
What do you think about Billy's trips to Tralfamadore?
Are they trippy hallucinations?
Are they part of Billy’s weird, sci-fi fantasy?
Or are they just a far-out metaphor? Shmoop amongst yourselves