The Parallel Plot Lines in Slaughterhouse-Five :: Slaughterhouse-Five Essays

The Parallel Plot Lines in Slaughterhouse-Five Kurt Vonnegut is and will always in my eyes and in the eyesof many others the author who made the science-fiction genre safefor not only mainstream appeal, but also critical acclaim andintellectual contemplation. Even though Arthur C. Clarkes 2001A Space Odyssey and Douglas Adams Hitchhiker series werereleased in some the same timeframe as Kurt VonnegutsSlaughterhouse-Five, none has held the same aura of respect andsignificance to the literary zeitgeist as Vonneguts monumentalmasterpiece. The respect Slaughterhouse-Five garnishes amongbookworms and the intellectual elite alike is no accident. KurtVonneguts universal acclaim and appeal surely comes in no smallpart from his gift for connecting, almost unnoticiably, seeminglyunrelated objects and events to give them deeper meaning,creating a phenomenon know within Jungian circles assynchronicity. By making his novel so multi-la yered by drawingthese comparisons, such as in being transported from a postulate carinto a POW camp to an extraterrestrial spaceship that hums likea melodious automobile horn, human beings being trapped within each import intime like an insect in amber, and the writers own repetition ofhis current project to a jokey old song, the writer gives usa deeper acumen into the real multi-layeredness of space andtime. When Billy Pilgrim and his fellow POWs are transported outof their train car and toward the POW camp, Vonnegut compares thecalm peeking-in and speech of the Axis power guards to thebehavior of an owl. The owl had been mentioned earlier in thenovel, more specifically in the persona of a clock hanging inBillys office, and is brought up again here to describe Billysantagonists The guards peeked in Billys car owlishly, cooedcalmingly. By using the owl already mentioned in the novel asa metaphor, Vonnegut makes an otherwise uncomfortab le and tensesituation more familiar. The writer uses this metaphor againwhile telling of the movement of the POWs out of the train car