Foreword: this is much less a review than my own personal exploration of my journey of understanding when it came to Slaughterhouse Five. I find reviewing classic novels fairly difficult given their widespread knowledge within modern culture. So much has already been said that there's no chance what I am writing is in any way original. And so, I felt that an exploration of my personal experience with the contents of the book was the best approach. Read at your own peril. 
 Call it what you will: "literary fiction," "classic novels," "books of literary merit," but I have never been one to actively enjoy such literature, a fact that I find disappointing in my reading habits. Sure, I excelled in my english classes throughout my education and had no trouble grasping the concepts in such novels, but when it came to my personal reading list I have had little to no interest in stepping back into the literary waters. In recent memory the only two "classic" novels I've read that weren't for an assignment were The Picture of Dorian Grey and The Jungle and neither of those were very complex in the themes presented within their pages. 
 So enter Slaughterhouse Five, a novel that has been on my to-read list for literally years. Heralded as one of the quintessential anti-war novels and a personal favorite of my father, there was no adequate reason for why I kept not reading it. I love the works of George Orwell, Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, all of whom I categorize under the same "literary sci-fi" blanket that I place Vonnegut. If there was any novel that would ease me into the waters of literary merit, it'd be this one. And so, finally, after years of postponing it I sat down and read Slaughterhouse Five. 
 I didn't get it. 
 Don't get me wrong, individually I think I understood the different themes Vonnegut was going for. The overall sense of predetermination vs. free will that Billy struggled with after his meeting with the Tralfamadorians. I understood the difficulty in putting into words the horrors Billy/the narrator witnessed after the bombing of Dresden by the allies. But I couldn't piece these two themes together and figure out what Kurt Vonnegut wanted the readers to take away from the novel. 
 My lack of understanding felt like a failure on my part. Here was this book that so many people told me I'd love, a book that carries weight in the book community and yet contained science fiction elements that are much maligned amongst "serious readers." And I couldn't understand how it all came together. My disappointment with myself was nearly palpable. 
 Thankfully the internet has made the locating of critical essays on the subject easily available to me and after some "out of class" analysis I figured out key pieces of knowledge that I was lacking in that hindered my enjoyment of the book. For starters, although I swear we spent the majority of 8th grade learning about WWII, I don't recall ever being taught about the fire bombings at Dresden. Honestly, I should have done research on the matter as soon as it was mentioned as it is the crux of Vonnegut's authorial motivations. Secondly, I thought that the bookend chapters outside of Billy Pilgrim's story were from the point of view of a narrator completely unrelated to Vonnegut. I feel that perhaps this has more to do with my modern expectations of a novel than any failing on Vonnegut's part. Once I figured out that what the narrator was saying could be read as Vonnegut's thoughts and fears, the themes fell into place. 
 So what did I learn in the end? I believe that the questions of predetermination and whether or not humans have free will was the only philosophy that Billy Pilgrim could adopt in order to cope with what happened at Dresden and his experiences in the war. This philosophy, although not necessarily the same worldview Vonnegut holds, is directly connected to Vonnegut's struggles to write a novel in response to the fire bombings. Both Billy and Vonnegut witnessed the aftermath of the fire bombings and both are overwhelmed by its magnitude. It is easier to comprehend the atrocity if you simply adopt the Tralfamadorian viewpoint of "so it goes." The fire bombings were going to happen, there was nothing anyone, neither Billy or Vonnegut or those giving out the orders could do to stop it. It erases or at least eases the sense of guilt that remains after seeing the needless destruction and death caused by the bombings. 
 In the end, the fact that in order to mentally cope with the atrocities of war Billy had to either have a literal intervention with aliens or suffered a complete mental break with reality and hallucinated the Tralfamadorians is one of the harshest critiques of war that I have seen. We as people brought so much death and pain to our fellow humans that the soldiers who witnessed the end result would rather invent an alien race abducting them and absolving them of all guilt than live with reality. WWII is often referred to as the last "great war" but it not only destroyed those involved physically with their lives but also mentally scarred those who survived. 
 So it goes.