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Vonnegut’s Illustration of Destructiveness of War Slaughterhouse-Five was written by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. in 1953. Whether the book is an antiwar novel or a science fiction novel is ambiguous, but after writing this book, Vonnegut insists that it was a failure. Failure it is not according to many critics. Rather than just writing an anti-war/science fiction novel, Vonnegut wrote a tale of the trials and tribulations resulting from the complete and utter destruction of Dresden during World War II. In Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut develops the protagonist, Billy Pilgrim along with utilizing science fiction and satire to demonstrate the destructiveness of war. Vonnegut uses satire and fiction to ironically display the destructiveness of war. In Slaughterhouse-Five, “Vonnegut comes at last in direct confrontation with his Dresden experience” (Keogh and Kislatis 172). John Somer adds, “It took him twenty three years to write his lousy little book” (222). In fact, because Vonnegut found it so difficult to write about the bombing of Dresden, “He comments on the reality of Dresden by treating the problems as fiction” (Giannone 83). One critic establishes that Vonnegut enjoys playing with fiction, using it to represent t