Kurt Vonnegut's novel Slaughterhouse Five is, at first glance, nothing more than a science fiction story about a man's journey to another planet and his ability to see the own life out of chronological order due to his power to travel through time. There are too many similarities to historical facts, human philosophies, and Vonnegut's own life for readers to believe that this novel about another world was created solely for entertainment. Digging into the deeper meaning behind this piece, we see that the physical setting is always Earth, and that the journeys Billy Pilgrim takes are simply hallucinations, created by chemicals or Pilgrim's head injuries. By including Vonnegut's experiences with the war and placing the novel's publication in the late 1960s, readers are able to see that the author condemns not only the Vietnam War, but also the counterculture movement that ignored the problems of the war. plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Vonnegut's condemnation of war comes quickly in this piece, as the book begins with the author's narration of the creation of the piece. In an attempt to create a novel about his personal experiences during World War II, Vonnegut visits one of the men who was with him in Dresden, Bernard O'Hare. During their conversation, O'Hare's wife, Mary, becomes angry because she believes Vonnegut will glorify the thrill of victory over the enemy, furthering the man's romantic fascination with war. He argues that “they were just children then,” robbed of their innocence and forced to witness unnecessary violence that haunted them or were repressed so much that they forgot much of the experience. The writer agrees with his point of view and promises that the book will not celebrate the war. The second chapter begins the saga of Billy Pilgrim. We are quickly made aware of the parallels between Vonnegut and Pilgrim, such as their identical ages and their imprisonment in Dresden. Pilgrim, however, has a special gift, given to him by the Tralfamadorians, namely the ability to travel through time. Here, the Tralfamadorians are supposed to represent a society that follows the ideals of the counterculture, who were given extrasensory powers by the drugs they ingested. It is possible to speculate that Billy's first encounter with the Tralfamadorians was the result of the half-full bottle of champagne he drank at his daughter's wedding. It is debatable whether or not the drink was laced with a psychoactive substance, but Vonnegut supports this conclusion by incorporating the phrase "Drink Me" (73), which is reminiscent of a scene from the film Alice in Wonderland, created in 1951. Remember this during the ending of the 1960s, the story was used by the counterculture to illustrate the hypocrisy they felt in parents, as parents taught the story which was laced with numerous drug references, but taught children that drugs were harmful (e.g. "White Rabbit" by Jefferson Airplane). The pilgrim's journey to Tralfamadore resembles a visit to a counterculture paradise like the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. Just as Billy and Montana are placed in a zoo, tours of San Francisco in the late 1960s included the famous hippie haven, where tourists witnessed a culture completely alien to them. The Tralfamadorian guide who speaks with Billy upon his arrival reminds readers of a leader like Ken Kesey, especially since he is referred to as a guide. This is the same term used when Kesey refuses to act as a guide for Sandy's unauthorized trip into the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. (EKAAT, 97) In addition to the similarity.