Slaughterhouse-Five

Billy Pilgrim survives the firebombing of Dresden as an American prisoner of war, comes unstuck in time, and tells the story out of order because, Vonnegut suggests, there is no order in which it makes sense. The novel is short, flat in tone, science-fictional in the middle, and openly autobiographical in its first and last chapters. It is also one of the most frequently banned books in American schools — a school board burned copies in Drake, North Dakota in 1973, and the removals that followed fed the litigation that ended in the Supreme Court’s 1982 school-library decision.

Context: Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) was captured at the Battle of the Bulge and was in Dresden on 13 February 1945. The novel appeared in 1969, at the height of the Vietnam War, and made his reputation.

Connections

• A Library to Build Great Americans — the 468-title curriculum this card came from; listed in the Ages 13-99+ band under Fiction.
• Kurt Vonnegut — the author.
• World War II — the war behind the book.
• War — the subject.
• Death — the subject.