Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut

Slaughterhouse 5 was written by Kurt Vonnegut in 1970, and chronicles the life of Billy Pilgrim, an optometrist unstuck in time. Kurt Vonnegut himself was born in 1922 in Indianapolis. He went to Cornell University, and served in Europe during WWII. He witnessed the bombing of Dresden, the greatest massacre of the entire war. After returning from the war he was inspired to write a novel about his experiences surrounding the bombing of Dresden. He has, in the meantime, turned into a drunken old fart. He calls up his war-buddy O’Hare, and goes to see him in order to bring back some memories of the war. They feel like heroes when they are talking about the war. As if they were brave men, fighting honourably for their country and for freedom. O’Hare’s wife points out to them that they were not; they were merely immature boys, who did not know what they were doing.
I think this is what inspired Vonnegut to write a fictional novel about the war. Billy Pilgrim, the protagonist of th...