"When I got home from the Second World War twenty-three years ago, I thought it would be easy for me to write about the destruction of Dresden since all I would have to do would be to report what I had seen." (K. Vonnegut in Slaughterhouse-Five)
So It Goes.
Kurt Vonnegut had big plans in 1945. He had just returned from WWII where he and fellow POWs had survived the incendiary bombing of Dresden, Germany. He had seen things that were beyond comprehension for human minds. He knew he had one hell of a story to tell.
It took him nearly 25 years to write it. It was perfect timing. When “Slaughterhouse-Five” was published in 1969, the United States was at the height of the Vietnam War. Protests were taking place across the country. Everyone was talking about war, while campaigning for peace. Vonnegut’s book, built around an event from a war that had happened 24 years prior, was about both: the absurdity of war and the longing for a better world of peace. Why would a country riddled daily with horrific war stories want to read a story about war? Because Vonnegut knew war, and he had finally found a way to talk about his experience: reality melded with science fiction, soldered with dark humor. His writing instilled suffering, and simultaneously muted it. Upon"Slaughterhouse-Five's" release, “…a public in the throes of seismic change was ready to embrace it” (Sumner, 125). The public has largely embraced it ever since, making it a true cultural icon in the literary sense. |
Vonnegut's typewriter on display at the
Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library.
Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library.