The Three Themes of Slaughterhouse-FiveKurt Vonnegut did a great job writing an irresistible reading novel in which no laughter is allowed, yet still be a sad book without tears . Slaughterhouse-five was copyrighted in 1969 and is a book about the 1945 fire bombing in Dresden that killed 135,000 people. The main character is Billy Pilgrim, a very young infantry scout who is captured in the Battle of the Bulge and quartered in a slaughterhouse where he and other soldiers are kept. The rest of the novel is about Billy and his encounters with the war, his wife, his life on earth and on the planet Tralfamador. There are 3 themes in the novel Slaughterhouse-Five, which remain imprinted in the readers' minds as they read it. this novel. Perhaps the most obvious theme in Slaughterhouse-Five is war and its contrast with love, beauty, humanity, innocence, etc. Vonnegut manages to tell the reader in Slaughterhouse-Five that war is bad for mankind and that it would be better for people to love each other. Finding the contrast between war and love is quite difficult, because the book is not about any couple who were cruelly torn apart by war. For example, Billy didn't seem to love his wife very much. Vonnegut expresses this very lightly and uses the word "love" very rarely. Yet when he does, he uses it effectively. Try to look for love and beauty in things that are apparently neither lovely nor beautiful. For example, when Billy was captured by the group of Germans, he did not see them as a cruel enemy, but as normal and innocent people: "Billy looked at the face that went with the hooves. It was the face of a blond angel, of a boy of fifteen years old. The boy was as beautiful as Eva" (...... in the center of the card ...... the eyes of the Tralfamadorians: "When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all in his opinion is that the person died in that particular moment is in bad shape, but that the same person is very well at many other moments Now, when I myself feel that someone has died, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is 'That's how it goes. '" (Vonnegut, p.27). Even with the contrast and differences between these three themes, Vonnegut unites them all in this novel. If Slaughterhouse-Five was the first novel the reader ever read, he would appreciate this style of writing and the dark humor that Vonnegut portrays in Slaughterhouse-Five. It would make the reader wish they had discovered him sooner and read his books long before now. Vonnegut, Kurt Jr. Slaughterhouse-five. New York: Dell Publishing Co. 1969.