The Children's Crusade By Kurt Vonnecut: A Literary Analysis

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The bombing of Dresden in World War II was one of the destructive events in history, killing more than 30,000 people. Kurt Vonnecut was an American soldier who experienced this first handed when he was captured and held at this city. As result of this event, he wrote the anti war novel Slaugtherhouse-Five or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance With Death, where the main character, Billy, a American soldier who was also captured and experienced the bombing of Dresden. In the book, Vonnecut condemns war by using black humor, a genre of satire that make fun of serious, to describes events such as death and being captured in the war to shows stupidity and illogicalness of war. Vonnecut first points out the meaningless of the war by describing events around Roland…show more content…
While Billy was still with his group traveling behind enemy line, a shooting occur, four shot was fired at Billy’s group. “The third was for the [Billy]”, it missed so “Billy stood there politely, giving the marksman another chance.”(33) Billy is giving a shooter another shot because he felt bad for the shoot. The war scar Billy so much that it had strip away Billy’s will to give and left sourless in a field of death.Also when Billy have been captured and sent into a concentration camp, a place filled with dying Russian, he was given a new coat to keep warm. The coat he got "had a fur collar and a lining of crimson silk, and had appartently been made for an impresario about as big as an organ-grinder’s monkey”(90) And he worn pretty dress though the camp filled with the dead and dying. Again it shows the confusion of the war that has taken away Billy’s sense and strip away who Billy is. Throughout the novel Vonnecut tries condemn war by showing the absurdity and stupidity though black humor. But at same time he knows it won’t do too much as he said that there would always be wars, that they were as easy to stop as

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