Like Randy, I’ve recently been reading a number of books involving war, although I’ve been reading so-called war novels: “Catch-22,” “A Separate Peace,” “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” “Cold Mountain,” and “Slaughterhouse Five.” It may be a senseless question to ask if a novel focuses more on the horrors of war or on the horrors of human life. Still, some books are placed in a war setting that could be replaced with other trying circumstances without fundamentally altering the book. “Catch-22” is described this way on occasion, although not by me.
My view — that “Slaughterhouse Five” is such a book — is heresy; the book is taken as one of the great anti-war novels in American history. And there is no denying that the book is at least nominally about the fire bombing of Dresden in World War II and was released during the Vietnam war.
My question: Am I the only one in the universe who reads “Slaughterhouse Five” this way?
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