The Story Archive

Slaughterhouse-Five

Kurt Vonnegut · 1969 CE · Novel · Modern / American · Contemporary

Billy Pilgrim, an American prisoner of war held in a Dresden slaughterhouse, comes unstuck in time and lives his life out of order - optometry in Ilium, the war, a marriage, an alien zoo on Tralfamadore. The narrator breaks in to explain how long he failed to write a book about a city he watched burn. Trauma told as science fiction.

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Lineage

Attributes

Genre
Science FictionWarSatire
Theme
War & ViolenceMemory & TimeFreedom vs FateExistential AbsurdityDeath & Mortality
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
EverymanWanderer
Plot structure
Nonlinear / FracturedFrame Narrative
Quest object (Greimas)
Survival
Symbol / motif
The MachineThe ClockFire
Conflict
vs Fate / Godsvs Society
Mode / tone
AbsurdistIronicSatirical
Culture / tradition
Modern / American

Closest analogues