Rachel Baack
Summary: In this explicitly anti-war novel, Vonnegut tells the story of Billy Pilgrim, who, at a young age, becomes a soldier in WWII. After the war, Billy becomes an optometrist, and he claims to have experienced an alien encounter that enlightens him as to the nonlinear nature of time. For that reason, the book is told in a nonlinear fashion. Billy is portrayed as both a relatively innocent and absurd kind of person, and the telling of the events that surrounded his and his comrades’ time in combat make the senselessness and evil of war abundantly clear.
Summary: In this explicitly anti-war novel, Vonnegut tells the story of Billy Pilgrim, who, at a young age, becomes a soldier in WWII. After the war, Billy becomes an optometrist, and he claims to have experienced an alien encounter that enlightens him as to the nonlinear nature of time. For that reason, the book is told in a nonlinear fashion. Billy is portrayed as both a relatively innocent and absurd kind of person, and the telling of the events that surrounded his and his comrades’ time in combat make the senselessness and evil of war abundantly clear.