Slaughterhouse-Five or the Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death

Kurt Vonnegut

Spiritual knowledge can come to us from surprising places… We may search for it in the Bhagavad Gita,the Bible, or at the feet of a wise master. But we also may find it in a young child's innocent question, or a lover's harsh word, or even an unexpected novel.

A friend just recently turned me on to this 60's anti-war cult classic. He considered Slaughterhouse-Five a great novel with a surprising spiritual depth.

After reading it myself I have to agree with my friend's assessment in spades. Vonnegut's novel is in fact Advaita philosophy with an Alice In Wonderland twist. What we think of as reality is twisted and turned in unreal ways in this masterpiece.

The main character's universe is very unstable, dancing from one point in the past, present, and future continuum to another. His reality is never very sure footed: the future is known, the past relived, and the present not always so.

The action takes place over the main character's lifetime. His central life altering experience being the devastating bombing of Dresden Germany during World War II (an event that Kurt Vonnegut actually experienced first hand). The plot is not a straight line but a loop of past, present, and future with a side trip to outer space. The main character is abducted by aliens for the sole purpose of being turned into an exhibit in their zoo. The aliens also have my favorite lines in the novel. The main character is agonizing over why he was captured, why is he on this spaceship, WHY ME!!! The aliens reply, "Why us? Why anything?" Advaita philosophy in a nutshell.

I suspect that out of the many of my generation who experienced this novel in the 60's and 70's a few were stirred by its message to take the first steps towards the all encompassing void. And now, dear reader, if you have yet to read this book the time is now ripe for you to enjoy it. Or maybe not. Oh well, so it goes!

Reviewed by Tony Kainauskas