Slaughterhouse Five-war

"Would you talk about the war now, if I wanted you to?" PAGE 121

This quote is effective in portraying a common attitude about war.  The commonality is that people who experience war firsthand are often reluctant to talk about it.  It is hard to know what war is really like because people do not want to talk about what they did, what they saw, what they heard.  The truth of war often alludes the people at home.  Those who were there do not want to relive their experience and bring back the horrific memories of war.  This is completely understandable.  The novel as a whole gives a new glance into what happens at war.  The narrator is able to refrain from inserting his emotion.  It was probably hard for him to recall all of this, but I appreciate what he has done.  It is the first work where I have really been able to see and attempt to understand what happens to soldiers after war.  It shows the reality of the difficult task of returning to home life after the war.  We often hear that it is hard to reacquaint oneself with civilian life again.  The views of war that he portray seem awful and terrible, but his lack of emotion makes it hard to fully understand.  He has been hardened by war so that death is no longer as emotional as it is for most civilians.