Themesin Slaughterhouse Five

    THEMES

• religion/Christianity/Jesus
• Title:the children's crusade
• epigraph:"Little Lord Jesus" doesn't cry about the animals
• Billyis an assistant chaplin
• (38-9)Crucifix
• fatalism/lack of action/
• stoicism/passivity / lack of emotion
• epigraph:"Little Lord Jesus" doesn't cry
• Deathof innocents/ Innocence
• children'scrusade
• MaryO'Hare
• (1) EdgarDerby killed for taking a teapot
• (5) usesdaughter's crayons to outline novel
• V andhis wife and friends have baby fat/ fat burned by Nazis; loosing baby fat=loosinginnocence
• (53)Adam and Eve, innocence, eagerness to behave decently
• Dogsare innocent (dog Spot)
• the horrors/coldness/ inhumanity of war
• tp: "Dutydance with death"
• importanceof love/ firendship/ comraderie/ simple human warmth
• relativism/lack of absolute values/ loss ofmeaning for life
• GerhardMuller (2) "If the accident will"
• (38-9)Crucifix
• structureof the novel:: structure of time:: structure of reality
• (1) "ALLTHIS HAPPEND MORE OR LESS" -- can't tell what is fiction and what is true
• (4) Tellsus the end/ climax of book (Edgar Derby)
• (5) structureof the novel-- crayons
• materialismand worship of objects as inadequate source of meaning for life
• (38-9)Crucifix

•  "so it goes" (6)-- first one is about dead people in the cellars of Dresden