Slaughter House-Five Reading # 1

In the first two chapters of Slaughter House- Five, I could definitely observe a much elaborated structure that was based on different time and context sequences. In the first chapter we find the narrator of the book which is writing a book about his experience in World War Two. In that first part, this narrator uses many disorganized pieces of narration that at the end unite as a whole. Billy, the character he has created in his novel probably reflects what this author wanted to be or what he wished would of happen back then.

The destruction of Dresden, in Germany, is the focus of the story, making this novel antiwar. After analyzing this, I realized that it’s not a coincidence that all great historical texts and literary works are based on wars. As we saw last year, texts such as the Bible’s Old Testament, Nijal’s Saga, The Art of War, and many more are based on different historical battles. Telling what happened during that time and then adding your own political, social or religious twist to it, convinces the reader to follow support your ideals. This relation between wars and literary pieces explains why so many books about these topics have been written. The winners of the different wars, in this case, a soldier of the American army, is convincing us throughout his story that the ideals and the actions of his country in the war are the correct ones, creating this instant prejudice against the Germans. This is the purpose of the author when writing an antiwar novel.

Call his book, the Children’s Crusades, reminds me of the great influence that the Church has in the world. The crusades, being an event hosted by the Roman Church during the middle ages makes a lot of sense when it is mentioned on a book about World wanted everybody to have a Christian foundation, and the Nazis wanted to eliminate the Jews, because they didn’t follow the German Christian traditions. These two horrid events were based on religion and specially with the purpose of giving more power to the church.

The book mentions the story of Ruth, the wife of Lot, who becomes a pillar of slat when looking back at Sodom and Gomorrah, “And Lot’s wife, of course was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that was so human.”(21-22) It is interesting how he mentions this story because he identifies himself with this selfish character by saying that he is like the pillar of slat: a human. What Rachel did was a very human like thing to do, meaning that the novel as a story with flaws has also a selfish purpose, or a reflection upon a mistake.

More connections related to the influence of religion in this novel, for example I could see this small detail that is described in the life of Billy, but that has a great influence on what the story is about. “Billy wasn’t Catholic, even though he grew up with a ghastly crucifix on the wall.”(38) He can see that even though the author doesn’t want to show any specific religion related to the character, he still wants some credit connection to be established. He also includes the following, “…the imperishable honor acquired for themselves and the great services they rendered to Christianity.”(51) In this pert, Weary wants to compare the accomplishments of his group of friends in the war to the three musketeers. He establishes also a very significant relationship between what they did and the duties to be followed in the Christian doctrines. This shows the significance of religion in this novel.