Thoughts on Slaughterhouse Five
Kurt Vonnegjut, Jr.'s Slaughterhouse Five displays a monotonous indifference to death, human cruelty, and suffering. An extreme relativism also pervades the novel, so that the death of a million Jews is treated no differently than the death of “[b]ody lice and bacteria” (84). Both are followed by the same resigned phrase: “So it goes.” If we accept Billy’s story, then this indifference is appropriate because none of these things matter, since time is not linear and life has n