This article is divided into two distinct essays. The first will focus on the literary strengths of Slaughterhouse-Five and the other on the literary weaknesses. It is up to the reader to determine whether one outweighs the other.

One of the strengths of Slaughterhouse-Five is that Vonnegut vividly puts his point across. His entire focus in the novel is to relate his story of Dresden, and show the reader some of the absurdity and irony he has found in life. Peter Reed once said, in his book Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.,

Vonnegut is passionate and personally motivated on the subject of Dresden because he witnessed it first-hand. This passion is evident as one reads the book. The first and last chapters offer personal, unrestricted commentary directly from the author on his experience writing and on his rendition of life in general. Vonnegut even includes himself in the book with interjections like, "That was I. That was me. That was the author of this book" (Vonnegut 125). His method of vividly putting his point across is blunt speech and repetitive phrases. "So it goes," is the mantra of this book; it appears hundreds of times throughout the novel every time death is mentioned. The language and prose Vonnegut selected for this novel is not difficult to understand. It is succinct and to the point. He bluntly proclaims his antiwar position in the opening chapter when he tells his sons they are not to take part in any massacre, and the news of one is not to fill them with glee. He also tells them to never work for a company that makes massacre machinery and express contempt for people who think we need machinery like that (Vonnegut 19). It is this simplicity that Vonnegut uses to both graphically tell the story and relate his cynicism of the modern world. He leaves no room for error in interpretation. Any reader who reads this book objectionably will understand and comprehend the many instances of irony and symbolism.

Vonnegut effectively uses comedy, specifically black humor, to juxtapose his experience and his interpretations.

Black humor is defined as the comparison of morbid to comical elements that produce a shocking or disturbing effect. The result is comments such as the one made by Wilfrid Sheed, "Slaughterhouse-Five is … a funny book at which you are not permitted to laugh, a sad book without tears, a book of carefully strangled emotions" (347). Vonnegut incorporates irony, almost to the point of absurdity, to expand the limits of black humor. An example of black humor in the book is the character of "Wild Bob". He is an infantry colonel in charge of the 405^the Infantry Regiment, which was completely destroyed in the Battle of the Bulge. Billy Pilgrim sees him just before he gets on a boxcar headed for Dresden. Wild Bob thinks that Billy is part of his regiment and frantically exclaims that there are dead Germans lying all over the battlefield that wish they had never heard of the 405^th. His crazy exclamations are funny at first, but the situation descends quickly to seriousness when we realize that Wild Bob is going insane and is about to die. We also realize that it is in fact the soldiers of the 405^th Regiment that are dead and not the Germans.

The title of the book, Slaughterhouse-Five, is an example of black humor. Though we do not realize it at first, the slaughterhouse is where Billy Pilgrim is kept safe during the bombing that killed thousands. But the word slaughterhouse denotes a place where animals are killed. The irony is that Billy Pilgrim was saved from death in a place of death and the German guards went "to the comforts of their own homes in Dresden. They were all being killed with their families" (Vonnegut 177).

Donald Greiner has this to say of Vonnegut’s humor:

The humor Vonnegut uses is what makes it possible for the reader to reflect on what he finds appalling in contemporary American society. That is why black humor is a strength to the book.

Slaughterhouse-Five can be interpreted as a novel that embeds hermeneutics in the plot and explanation of human nature. This broadened perspective is another of the strengths of the novel. By definition, hermeneutics is the science of scriptural interpretations. And anyone who studies biblical interpretations is called a hermeneut. Vonnegut makes several biblical allusions in the book and outside in speeches. He called himself, and Joseph Heller, "Methuselah" in a speech to the graduating class of Rice University and called the graduates, "Adams and Eves" (Huber). In Slaughterhouse-Five,

These biblical allusions open another level of interpretation in all of Vonnegut’s work. Critically speaking, Vonnegut does not use this novel to explore a theological look at life. It is more antitheological. Scholl says Vonnegut renounces Christianity, but believes in the philosophical ethics, principles, and values of the Christian world (Klinkowitz, Slaughterhouse-Five: Reforming the Novel and the World 17). This is evident in the mannerisms of Billy Pilgrim. He is a pacifist, and never does anything in the novel to hurt anyone else physically or emotionally. His actions mimic that of any God-fearing Christian, but they have no theological basis. Billy Pilgrim never claims to believe in God or the divinity of scriptures. His father had no religion and his mother was a substitute organist in several of the churches around town. She took him along every time she went. She told him they would join a religion once they found the right one, but she never found the right one. Billy’s mom bought a large graphic crucifix from a souvenir shop on the family vacation out west and put it above Billy’s bed. The crucifix’s macabre rendition of Christ’s wounds gave Billy nightmares.

The novels of Kilgore Trout (the alter ego of Kurt Vonnegut) that are mentioned in Slaughterhouse-Five all have biblical allusions. "Perhaps the key Trout story…is The Gospel from Outer Space in which a Visitor from outer space studies Christianity and concludes Christians are cruel partly because of slipshod storytelling in the New Testament" (Schatt, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. 91). The problem the Visitor finds is that Jesus appears just as a carpenter when he is, in fact, the Son of God. The new gospel, according to the Visitor, should be one where Jesus literally is a nobody and only after he is crucified do the heavens open and God exclaim that he is "adopting the bum as his son, giving him the full powers and privileges of The Son of the Creator of the Universe throughout all eternity" (Vonnegut 109-110). Vonnegut thinks this would prevent any future wars.

The Tralfamadorian philosophy, which Billy lives by, of ignoring the bad times and focusing on the good, echoes the philosophy of Christianity, without the creeds and assorted institutions. Vonnegut believes in the value of every human being. "He opposes any institution, be it scientific, religious, or political, that dehumanizes man and considers him a mere number and not a human being" (Schatt, "The World of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr." 348). It is these philosophies and levels of interpretations that add strength to the book.

Slaughterhouse-Five is written in the somewhat schizophrenic voice of a man going insane. Vonnegut’s successful experiment with the psychological format of the novel is one of its strengths. He explains on the long title page of the book that "This is a novel somewhat in the telegraphic schizophrenic manner of tales" (Vonnegut title page). Slaughterhouse-Five abandons all traditional forms of the novel. Like a circle, it essentially has no beginning and no end, save the critical personal commentaries given in chapters one and ten. The events are not in chronological order, but are connected continually in psychological time. The film version of Slaughterhouse-Five does a great job of vividly portraying these connections. Images invoke memories and those memories invoke more memories. In the novel we see Billy Pilgrim struggling to come to terms with his experience in Dresden. He shows symptoms of schizophrenia with post traumatic stress disorder. It is not surprising that these characteristics are not apparent to Billy’s family until after the plane crash and lobotomy. The accident and operation may have caused brain damage and a chemical imbalance causes Billy’s difficulty with work, and delusions about being mated with a pornographic movie star on an alien planet. "Billy Pilgrim’s conversion to Tralfamadorian fatalism, or fatal dream, which is Tralfamadore by anagram, assures his schizophrenic descent into madness (Broer 87). This method is marvelously effective in relating Vonnegut’s own jumbled thoughts and memories of Dresden. He says, "It [the book] is so short and jumbled and jangled…because there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre" (Vonnegut 19). Peter Reed sums up Vonnegut’s use of the schizophrenic style with these words:

One of the major flaws of Slaughterhouse-Five is that there are no true characters. At the expense of making a point, Vonnegut never fully develops the people he writes about. This is a recurring problem in many of Vonnegut’s novel; it is not focused in Slaughterhouse-Five. "Vonnegut draws his characters with a thick black outline and colors them crudely. Too often the cartoons are hardly more than clichés of the American scene. …Most of Vonnegut’s characters are as forgettable as last Sunday’s funny papers" (Towers 533). The characters in Slaughterhouse-Five seem like listless masks. The narrator speaks more often than the characters and we never see them fully develop. There is not a complete moral journey like Huck Finn or a complete collapse into schizophrenia like Paul in Conrad Aiken’s short story, "Silent Snow, Secret Snow." Characters such as Wild Bob, Paul Lazzaro, Howard Campbell, Bertram Copeland Rumfoord, and Kilgore Trout border on the absurd. Vonnegut also leaves little room for his characters to develop.

A structured novel and a structured plot leads to structured characters. Vonnegut has never created the loveable and symbolic characters like Mark Twain’s Huck Finn or Hemingway’s Santiago. His characters lead small, simple lives and they don’t seem real.

Vonnegut takes serious subjects too lightly. Slaughterhouse-Five, with its Tralfamadorians and Montana Wildhack are viewed as both silly and absurd. It is not appropriate for such a delicate and somber subject as a massacre. "The novel flirts with the dangers of being episodic, disjointed, too diverse, and even too brief, for its content" (Reed, Kurt Vonnegut Jr. 202). Critics see this flaw as what separates him from a major satirist. For a major satirist, the topics on which they write are most critical and they write with earnest intentions. Vonnegut’s blend of science fiction with modern satire results in a novel that is not appropriate for the subject matter and does give his superb ides the credit they deserve. "Vonnegut’s clownish irresponsibility toward his own creations-while it may ingratiate him to his fans-is a major source of…resistance" (Towers 533).

In Slaughterhouse-Five, the death of Edgar Derby is entirely outrageous. He might be the only hero in the book because of his simple friendship to Billy Pilgrim, and his willingness to be the leader of the prisoners. He even stands up to Howard Campbell, and he is committed to making a difference in the war. We learn that he is forty-four and had to get special permission just to enter the war. In the end he is shot for stealing a simple teapot from the rubble. Vonnegut’s response to death also reflects his lightheartedness. "So it goes." He says it as if death were the same as breathing. He has no respect for the dead. His fetish with this phrase and simple language is effortless, naïve, and almost childlike (Crichton 495). He mocks the institutions and theology of religion and the dignity of the armed forces. He disgraces and perverts his own occupation as a writer with the character of Kilgore Trout.

Vonnegut will not commit. He will not take a stand on the serious issues and attempts to straddle conflicting sides. He satirizes many of institutions of our society, but his satire lacks true sarcasm because he never places his criticism on anybody. This noncommittal attitude is a devise he uses to evade cornering himself on any one side. While this tactic appeals to many of the youth and counter-culture, it sows contempt from the venerable generation of contemporary literary critics. "He [is] an offensive writer, because he will not choose sides, ascribing blame and penalty, identifying good guys and bad" (Crichton 495). In Slaughterhouse-Five, for example, Vonnegut never commits to any stance on religion. He sympathizes with Lot’s wife in the first chapter, describes Billy Pilgrim as a Christ-like figure, and rewrites Christianity with the novels of Kilgore Trout. His perpetual ambiguous stance warrants scorn and does not give the issues he writes about justice. His novels, especially Slaughterhouse-Five, lack a true commitment and his writing suffers because of it. Robert Towers enumerates some of the weaknesses in Vonnegut’s writing when he said: