The consequences of war – Reflection of Slaughterhouse 5 by Vintage Vonnegut

Slaughterhouse 5 written by Vintage Vonnegut is a book that focus mainly on the bombings of Dresden in 1945 in the end of the Second World War. Vonnergut have turned this topic into a black comical story about a guy named Billy Pillgrim that is an optician/soldier that was a prisoner of war when the bombings of Dresden took place. 

The book jumps in time from when the bombings took place to the time after the war and how the war affected Billy and how his life goes on.

There are several chapters that have affected me and made me sit down and reflect about how awful war really is.  

One piece that deeply affected me is when Ira C.Eaker is quoted on page 154 “I deeply regret that British and U.S. bombers killed 135,000 people in the attack of Dresden, but I remember who started the last war and I regret even more the loss of more than 5,000,000 Allied lives in the necessary effort to completely defeat and utterly destroy Nazism.  Page 154”

Are people in war really thinking like this? Just because 5 million of people died on “your side” it justifies you to kill 135 000, most part civilians? The parallels going on in the Middle East right now is apparent. Both the terrorist attacks that recently took place in France and the never ending war between Israel and Palestine.

First there are terrorist attacks which justifies governments to bombard several cities just to revenge the people that died in the first attack. I agree that we need to arrest the guilty people and in many cases make a statement, but I want people to think before they act and just don’t do things in anger that could affect people that have nothing to do with it, but unfortunately I have my doubts about it.

War is a terrible thing and affects lots of people, but hopefully we can react and influence our politicians to think before they act.

I want to end this reflections with a quote from the book: “Why don’t you write an anti-glacier book instead?’

What he meant, of course, was that there would always be wars, that they were as easy to stop as glaciers. I believe that too. Page 3”