forces into more and more remote places around the globe, Vonnegut crafted a story, Slaughterhouse Five, that would undermine the assumptions that the policymakers relied on and reveal the true nature of war. He travels between different moments in his life, unable to choose. First, Billy Pilgrim, the novel’s protagonist, has become unstuck in time.

The plot is non-linear for a number of reasons. From his own experiences, Vonnegut knew that the Munich Syndrome and its application in WWII and after were fallacious, so while American policymakers led U.S. Slaughterhouse-Five has a non-linear narrative, which means that the events occur out of the order in which they happened. Birds were talking, writes Vonnegut, and one bird said to Billy Pilgrim, ‘Poo-tee-weet After the corpse-disposal scene, one of the novel’s most gruesome, we now understand that Billy enters the horse-cart and proceeds to have one of the happiest days of his life.

The explanations used to justify these interventions have become known collectively as the Munich Syndrome, which led American policymakers to believe that any aggression in the world had to be met with swift and unfaltering force. What happened in the intervening years to shape the novel that would eventually become Slaughterhouse Five? As Vonnegut grappled with his experiences for two decades, American leaders increased American involvement around the world. Although Vonnegut was liberated in 1945, the novel about the events he witnessed was not published until 1969. While fighting in Europe during WWII, Kurt Vonnegut was taken prisoner and sent to work at a German prison camp where he witnessed one of the most destructive events of WWII, the firebombing of Dresden, Germany by the Allied forces.

Slaughterhouse five poo tee weet cover