Sunday, March 1, 2009

What's your address?

All your life your taught that you mustn't judge books by their covers nor their titles. Although most of the time you try not to let the cover of the book interfere with your choice, it is inevitable. In fact, sometimes the cover or the title may be one of the reasons why you choose the book and it could happen that the book isn't as good as the title or cover is. 

When you do buy a book and the title is an unusaul one, you usaully search for clues in the book that have a relationship with the book. 

So the question comes up, 
Why did Vonnegut name the book 'Slaughter House- Five' ?

Before hand, we already knew the book was about war and the bombing of Dresden therefore we automatically made the connection between the words 'slaughterhouse' and 'war'. Both of these deal with death and suffering. 

There are several passages that explain to us why Vonnegut named the book.

"...who took us to the slaughterhouse where we had been locked up at night as prisoners at war." (pg. 1)

"The parade pranced, staggered and reeled to the gate of the Dresden slaughterhouse..." (pg. 152)

"Their address was this: ' Schlachthof-funf '. Schlachcthof meant slaughterhouse. Funf was good old five." (pg. 153)

Most of these passages are very self explanatory and immediately lets us understand why the book is titled as it is. 

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