"Slaughterhouse-Five or The Children's Crusade" is not just a book about the Allied bombing of Dresden on 13 February 1945 in which 130,000 people lost their lives, but also a treatise on the madness of war and on the non-descriptiveness of human existence. The novel begins with the history of the novel. The narrator, whose biographical data match exactly with those of the author Kurt Vonnegut, describes his personal struggle with the writing of the book: the exploration of old companions, writing hundreds of pages of manuscript, the choice of the subtitle "The Children's Crusade", etc. Only after this meta-narrative introduction that begins "real" plot of the novel. The plot can actually be summarized in one sentence: the American soldier Billy Pilgrim device 1944 in German prisoner of war and is sent as forced laborers to Dresden, where he with and survived because the prisoners are housed in an underground slaughterhouse the bombing of the Allies. However, real protagonist of the novel is the mistaken narrative. The time levels change continuously and smoothly between the years 1944 and 1972. Thus, for example, when Billy in the fifties wants to go to the bathroom and suddenly finds the latrines of the prison camp in 1944 and shortly thereafter, to after completion of his business, again his wife into gemeinsane double sets. The Irsinn the narrative reflects the Irsinn the narrative again. How is one to represent the horrors of war and the mass deaths of soldiers and civilians? Many authors of postmodernism have answered this question by telling their stories as they consider the war: unlinear, confusing and endure only with pitch black humor (Joseph Heller's "Catch 22" and Jonathan Safran Foer "Everything is Illuminated"). What connects all levels of time is the utterance leitmotif used "So it goes" always when it comes to suffering, dying and death. Whether it is the death of a dog, a soldier, a civilian or 5 million civilians, repeatedly dipping the lapidary "So it goes" on. This is difficult to interpret. Expressed herein the contempt for life, longing for death, despair or cynicism of the narrator from? This is up to the reader to evaluate themselves. Conclusion: impressive story of war and death, that is, despite the ever-changing layers of time, relatively easy to read.
