Disagreeing With The Critic Essay

876 words - 4 pages

The novel Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut is a very complex science fiction story that is written in only 215 pages. Many people read this novel and have very different opinions on it. Slaughterhouse Five has numerous reviews written about it all over the internet. After reading several of these reviews, I have found one that I essentially can disagree with.
In 2007, Kerri O’Connor wrote an analysis of Slaughterhouse Five for Teen Ink’s “Book Reviews.” In this article, O’Connor shares that the story is very amusing, and is a great read. The author summarizes the novel into a few sentences. She shares what she took from the novel, and also explains how the novel was written and why that ...view middle of the document...

I do not entirely agree with her claim. I believe that some aspects of the book show the war in a negative way, but not all of them do. For example, the statement “so it goes” does not create a bad image for war. Many times throughout the story, “so it goes” is written at the end of the sentence when a character dies. This statement came from the Tralfamadorians. When they see a corpse they think that “the dead person is in bad condition in that particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty other moments” (Vonnegut 27). This means that life ends but before it does, many great things happen. “So it goes” simply means that life goes on. This statement works as a symbol for the trials we encounter in life, such as the death of others, and how they are not the end of the world. Vonnegut uses this as a positive symbol for war. By using this statement, he is sharing that even after we lose loved ones from war, their life was great, life goes on, and life is still a beautiful thing.
The last claim O'Connor shares in her review of Slaughterhouse Five that I disagree with is her final statement “Slaughterhouse Five combines many aspects of life and is a great read for all” (O'Connor). I disagree with both parts of this statement. I do not think that many different aspects of life are shown in this book. I believe that Slaughterhouse Five shows the life of a man...

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