Cover image for Slaughterhouse-five, or, the children's crusade : a duty-dance with death
Title:
Slaughterhouse-five, or, the children's crusade : a duty-dance with death
ISBN:
9780060573775
Edition:
Unabridged.
Publication Information:
New York : Caedmon/HarperCollinsPublishers, p2003.
Physical Description:
5 sound discs (360 min.) : digital, stereo. ; 4 3/4 in.
General Note:
"Includes an interview with the author and an archival author recording set to music"--Container.
Added Author:
Summary:
Like Vonnegut, who speaks in his own voice in several places to confirm that much of the novel is based on his wartime experiences, Billy Pilgrim lives through the firebombing of Dresden during World War II. From the beginning of the book, war is presented as both comically and horrifyingly absurd. Billy and his comrades, American and German, are ludicrously inept as soldiers. As the subtitle of the novel indicates, they are children on a gamelike crusade, manipulated by inscrutable forces. Yet the game is deadly: The destruction of Dresden, a city of no strategic importance, populated only by Germans too old or weak to fight and prisoners of war such as Billy, is senseless but inevitable. Because of the shock of this event, Billy becomes a perpetual prisoner of war, returning again and again in his mind to this scene. Scenes from World War II alternate with Billy's life on exhibition in a kind of zoo on the distant planet Tralfamadore. What little solace or pleasure Billy experiences comes at the hands of the Tralfamadorians, whose calmly fatalistic philosophy seems wise when compared to normal human stupidity and irrationality.
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