Custom term paper on ISU: Slaughterhouse Five

Comparing film with the book we could say that despite the fact that Billy in the novel learns something new from each person or a stranger, all characters in one or another way have an influence on him, the movie does not hit Kilgore Trout and Vonnegut himself, who appears in his novel as a statistician. These omissions are reasonable, given the properties of the media – in the film these characters embody it would be difficult. Ultimately, the presence of the novel’s idea of Vonnegut’s Trout draws a line on the role of the writer in society. Trout is also a projection of the author, his books offer Billy (and the reader) new perspective on their own existence, humanity, and a critical attitude towards society.
Vonnegut impartial and detached describes the life of Billy in chapters 2-9, and also tells us about their own experiences related to the creation of the novel in chapters 1 and 10, explaining the first person of his essence. These introductory and concluding chapters also give a novel volume, bringing it close to reality, and allowing each reader to extrapolate the war and travel Billy in space and time on their own experiences. This goal, in particular, is references to the assassination of President Kennedy and the Vietnam War. Vonnegut finished his novel in just two days after Kennedy was assassinated, however, he believed that readers need to be recalled about this fact. The idea that Billy Pilgrim is a man, like everyone else, not quite revealed in the film. In addition, four times the narrator refers to his involvement in the events described in chapters 2-9. He once said that someone called Dresden the country Oz. “It was me. Personally, I” – once the author added. This is the only four episodes, which was reflected in the film, but on screen the word “Oz” says Billy, as in the movie is not the person from whom the story is, there is only a camera and a typewriter that appears at the beginning.custom term paper
Although the use of voice-over the screen would allow to achieve interesting results, George Roy decided that on behalf of the author in his film will serve operator. Although this transformation, the overall impression created by Vonnegut, has been lost, the director managed should to convey the essence. In fact, at times the film surpasses the original by the impact that the viewer jumps through time and space. The film begins with a scene that is not directly present in the novel. Matured Billy typing a letter to local newspaper publisher, in which he explains everything that happened to him. This scene serves as an introduction to the film, and printed words (to which the camera draws our attention) play the role of the narrator in the first chapter (not replacing, other, the presence of Vonnegut as the author) and, to some extent, the role of an impersonal narrator of the second chapter, in which Vonnegut describes to us the whole story. Sound of typewriter Billy looks like an echo given to the empty house, and then the viewer can feel the first time, which means situation of “disconnect from time to time”. Throughout the film the camera brings us to the things which seem to act on behalf of the narrator, and this may be something to see through innocent eyes of Billy, or something is happening somewhere else.
Often the transitions that were used in the film were taken directly from the book, but the film is original and transitions. One good example of such harmonious transition, showing Billy jumps in time, is includes in the episode in which Billy covered his head with a blanket on a train, which takes him to the prison camp. The camera shows us a picture from Billy’s position and it allows us to percept surrounding reality trough his eyes; and when he again lifts the blanket, then the frame is no longer the guy who tells Billy that he has survived in trouble and cleaner (so happened that shortly he still died), and instead, we see Billy’s mother. We see her just one second, as Billy once again covered his head, partly because she has spent so much effort to give his life… and Billy that life does not like.
According to Merrill we should add that “Slaughterhouse-Five is also wonderful because of its constant use of descriptive imagery, whether it pertains to war, animals, sounds or smells.” (Merrill, 1990) When I was reading the book, I imagine every event with big amount of details and it was possible only due to the talent of its author who made such the way of imagination possible. In the continuation of the quotation we should mention that “the film handles the visual imagery well; Billy really does look like a clown bopping up and down in his fur-collared impressario’s coat and silver boots, but other imagery would be hard to duplicate. After all, how does one show that Weary’s face is like a “toad in a fishbowl”? Moreover, while the film usually retains Vonnegut’s colorful descriptive imagery, there are times when the film does not even come close.” (Merrill, 1990) I like many episodes in the book and also in the film and I was interested in train description, because it was described like real or even animate creature that has its own life and properties like any alive organism. Merrill stataed that “for example, the train in the novel is likened to a “single organism which ate and drank and excreted through its ventilators. It talked or sometimes yelled through its ventilators, too. In went water and loaves of black bread… and out came shit and piss and language”. The train in the movie is just that – a train. The olfactory imagery is not noticeable in the movie, but the auditory imagery is translated successfully for the most part. In the novel, “sound is used to reinforce the negative effect already established by the war imagery,” as Monica Loeb points out. In the movie however, few direct links to passages in the book exist; nevertheless, the net effect of the ambiguity of the sounds used in the film serves the same purpose as the negative loud sounds in the novel – they both make Billy relate sounds of harmless, innocent things to war. In the film there are many transitions facilitated by sounds. This is accomplished through the forced similarities between typing sounds, gun shots, applause, screams, bombs, an airplane crash, tanks, electric shock treatments, and trains.” (Merrill, 1990)