Slaughterhouse Five

[knip]

I've been working for a while on a paper discussing the legal and ethical aspects of the 1945 bombing of Dresden, and recently found out this is where Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five novel takes place. After some googling, I am now familiar with the storyline and know enough from studying the affair to say the story is realistic.

My question is: is the book worth a read?

[Doreen Peri]

Absolutely!

It's one of my favorites! Vonnegut weaves time in and out of itself. His use of point of view brilliantly! He examines war, love, imagination, hope, dispair, human resiliance & perseverence, all through an extremely creative and clever storyline which interweaves various time periods together. I can't recommend this book highly enough.

Also, after you read it, rent the movie. I am often disappointed when great books get made into movies. The film usually doesn't touch the book. Of course, no filmmaker can present the language of literature and it's probably difficult to turn any book into a two-hour film, but I wasn't at all disappointed with this film. They did an excellent job with it!

Do read the book first, though.

[knip]

thanks do

that might be my christmas present this year

my dad was in dresden in 1945 when they burnt the city to the ground...i understand vonnegut was, too

the mixture of high explosive bombs, designed to open up rooftops and blast out doors and windows to allow the drafts that fed the fires caused by the following incendiary bombs was gruesomely and horribly effective...it tended to disregard the UN Additional Protocol I requirement of discrimination in targeting, however

many of the dead were the result not of fire, but of the drafts required by the fires sucking the oxygen out of shelters...death by asphyxiation