Slaughterhouse Five as One of the Most Sophisticated Science Fiction Book in American Literature.

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The novel Slaughterhouse Five, also known as The Children’s Crusade: A Duty Dance with Death, is an Anti-war novel. It is also a historical fiction, science fiction, and a semi-autobiographical fiction as well. The historical aspect of the book takes place during World War II, which is based on the author’s own experiences. The author’s main purpose in writing this book is not to stop wars, because as he puts it, “he might as well write an anti-glacier book because you can’t stop those either”, but more to inform readers on the destruction war causes. Billy Pilgrim is a World War II veteran who survives the infamous firebombing of Dresden, Germany, which took the lives of more people than both of the atomic bombings on Japan combined. Billy is a wealthy optometrist married with a daughter and a son. Throughout this book Billy says he has become “unstuck in time”. He lives his life both in random order and all at once, in a fourth dimension of time travel. This concept, he says, is explained by alien beings called Tralfamadorians. Tralfamadorians are shaped like plungers with a hand at the top holding an eyeball. They teach Billy their concepts of time when they abduct him on his daughter’s wedding night. They believe that time is non-linear and rather it occurs randomly. For example they think that it’s unwise that human’s cry when someone dies. They believe that just at that particular moment the person is in bad shape, but in another random part of their life they are just fine. This is why when Billy or the author mentions a death it is followed by: “So it goes”. It is because of Billy being “unstuck in time” that the novel follows no chronological order, no cause and effect, and things just happen randomly. The first time Billy becomes “unstuck in time” he is brought back in time to where he is captured behind enemy lines in World War II. This scene does

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