Death In A Slaughterhouse

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Term Paper Title	Death In A Slaughterhouse
# of Words	2278
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	9.11

Death in a slaughterhouse

From Ancient Greek playwright, Euripides, ("To die is a debt we must all of
us discharge" (Fitzhenry 122)) to renowned Nineteenth Century poet, Emily
Dickinson, ("Because I could not stop for Death/ He kindly stopped for me -/
The carriage held but just ourselves/ And Immortality" (Fitzhenry 126)) the
concept of death, reincarnation, rebirth, and mourning have been brooded over
time and time again.  And with no definite answers to life's most puzzling
question of death being given, it only seems natural that this subject is
further explored.  Kurt Vonnegut is one of many modern writers obsessed with
this idea and spends many of his novels thematically infatuated with death.
His semi- autobiographical novel, dealing with his experiences in Dresden
during WWII, named Slaughterhouse Five, The Children's Crusade or A Duty
Dance With Death, is no exception to his fixation.  "A work of transparent
simplicity [and] a modern allegory, whose hero, Billy Pilgrim, shuffles
between Earth and its timeless surrogate, Tralfamadore" (Riley and Harte
452), Slaughterhouse Five shows a "sympathetic and compassionate evaluation
of Billy's response to the cruelty of life" (Bryfonski and Senick 614).  This
cruelty stems from death, time, renewal, war, and the lack of compassion for
human life; all large themes "inextricably bound up" (Bryfonski and Mendelson
529) in this cyclically natured novel that tries to solve the great mystery
of death for us, once and for all.
Billy's life had revolved around these ideas from the time he was a child.
At the age of twelve Billy "had undergone the real crises of his life, had
found life meaningless even if he could not then articulate that concept, and
was in desperate need for reinventing himself and his universe" (Bryfonski
and Senick 615).  These feelings stayed with Billy throughout the strange
occurrences of his life.  When still a baby in the eyes of many people, Billy
was sent off to death's symbiotic partner war, fighting World War II in
Europe.  Here he is a depressed soldier who has seen too much death and
destruction in order to function like a human being and wants to die, but
like many other incidents in his life, he ironically manages to maintain his
life while those around him, who want to live, die.  It is perhaps during
this time that Billy first visits Tralfamadore, a neighboring planet with a
time warp "so that he could be on Tralfamadore for years, and still ...

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