It's hard to explain Slaughterhouse Five. it allures you with the idea of a simple war story in the first chapter, then  takes you for a ride. It makes you question the aging of time, the destruction of mental health, and of course war, and it does it all perfectly, all told through the story of a man who is traumatized. 

Billy Pilgrim, was a WW2 vet who survived the Dresden fire bombing in Germany, by hiding with fellow soldiers as a P.O.W in a meat locker, after his time in the war he would like to write a book, a book he has struggling to explain without glorifying war, but before he writes his book he would experience even more trauma, from surviving a plane crash, to becoming a widow, he would end up imaging some of the fiction stories he read as to be true, quite literally believing aliens have been affecting his life. This  gives us the story of a broken man, who essentially tells this story as if his life is flashing before his eyes.

Protagonist Billy Pilgrim’s stories are scattered and jagged. The novel does not uphold a normal style of storytelling, but more so the thoughts of a man who has experienced immense trauma. It is almost like the final thoughts of a dying soul, in a sense, a flashback through the major points in his life. It reminds me a lot of the storytelling of Pulp Fiction, playing things out of order and adding confusion—but necessary for the impact of everything to hit harder. 

I think Slaughterhouse Five is a phenomenal story, it harks on a point to not allow a war story to be romanticized to be made into some play or movie that is all about the action and the heroism. This story pulls you down to earth, gives you a character who is lackluster and can barely mark his own independence until he is completely insane. of course his insanity only occurs after he experiences the Dresden fire bombing which would kill 25,000 - 100,000 soldiers and civilians. I would say is a fair reason to lead a man to insanity, an insanity he would ignore and deny all through the story, even creating his own fictional backstory involving aliens and time traveling. His inability to confront his mental trauma leaves heavy blows as you realize the shell of a human Billy has become, and see its all trauma connecting him and this point is hammered even harder by Vonnegut’s story telling with the amount of repetition of heavy hitting motifs, such as, “So it goes” something he uses at the end of every sentence he talks about something heavy like death, and, as stated before, the non linear story experience that has you running to keep up with the pace of the story.

Overall I think Slaughterhouse 5 is a phenomenal War story, and what makes it so perfect, is how real and damaging, this story is, that is unbelievable, yet so closely related to the reality Vonnegut, and not just him alone, we feel the constant reminder of how easy we could become someone like Billy Pilgrim.