Rare Beautiful Moments in Slaughterhouse Five
In class today, we talked about rare beautiful moments within Slaughterhouse Five , amidst Vonnegut’s cynicism throughout most of the novel. Two scenes that were mentioned during discussion stood out to me. One of them was the scene where the couple shows Billy how injured the horses are and Billy starts crying. This is one of the only moments in the book where Billy shows real emotion and he doesn’t seem completely out of it. Although the scene is quite saddening, I would say that it is a beautiful scene because of the rare glimpse of the human in Billy that is portrayed through his sympathy for the horses in this scene. The other scene I found beautiful is the one where the innkeeper tells the soldiers to sleep well in German. The innkeeper is one of the only characters that has shown kindness throughout this whole novel, and because of it, this scene is filled with a feeling of warmth and hospitality that is nowhere to be found in the rest of the novel. Even when Billy is at his o...