Most of the book is the narrative from Billy Pilgrim a unique character who has the ability to become "unstuck in time", which means that he can uncontrollably drift from one part of his life to another "and the trips aren't nessicarilly fun". The whole books is organized in the same way Billy moves in time. In consists of numerous sections and paragraphs strung together in no chronological order, seemingly at random. The whole narration is written in the past tense, so that the reader cannot identify where the author's starting point is. This aspect of the book is almost identical with the Tralfamadorian type of book:

"There isn't any particular relationship b

With this statement, critic James Lembourg thinks that Vonnegut is trying to say that he doesn't believe in free will. Vonnegut describes time, life and the war as unexplainable. The Tralfamadorieans tell Billy that although earth is corrupt, humans can do nothing about it. There are no villains in Slaughterhouse Five, no one to take the blame. That means that the only villain can be "God Himself, or Herself, of Itself, or whatever". God Almighty had to be the one who put us into the amber, who had created us the way we are. In Slaughterhouse's first chapter Vonnegut confesses:

That is a very Earthling question to ask, Mr. Pilgrim. Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?'

'Yes.' Billy, in fact, had a paperweight in his office which was a blob of polished amber with three lady bugs embedded in it.

I agree with Mark Vit when he says that the most often expressed theme of the book is that we, as people, are "bugs in amber". The phrase first appears when Billy is kidnapped by the Tralfamacorian flying saucer:

So even though humans go about their business thinking that they have a free will, Vonnegut preaches that God has absolute control over our lives and their is nothing to be done about it.

This brings up another theme of the novel, identified again by Mark Vit. Death is inevitable and that no matter who dies, life still goes on. The phrase "so it goes" recurred 106 times: it appears every time anybody dies in the novel,and sustains the circular quality of the book. It enable the book, and Vonnegut's narration to go on. It must have been hard writing a book about death through the eyes of a Tralfamadorinan:

Billy licked his lips, thought a while, inquired at least: 'Why me?'

Thompson believes that the books meaning lies deeper than the fact that "war is bad." Pilgrim refuses to accept the idea that there are absurd things in life, because if death can be so senseless then what does that say about life itself? The absurd life is essentially one without meaning and that often ends with a ridiculous death. The firebombing of Dresden, the absurd execution of Edgar Derby, the war itself are all really just means to an end. Billy watches as 100,000 lives are snuffed out, and he cannot help but wonder "why?" Ultimately, he cannot answer that

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Approximate Word count = 1588
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)