Slaughterhouse-Five: Society's Attitudes Toward Women

Slaughterhouse-Five, a massively successful novel written by Kurt Vonnegut in 1949 is a book that reveals the bombing took place in Dresden, Germany that has been significantly overlooked. The book explores a series of topics ranging from the effects of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, absurdity of wars, and how the society perceived things. More specifically, the book focuses on the society’s attitude towards women. Vonnegut portrays women as overbearing, simple-minded, and highly superficial objects that are no more than “sex objects”. In the first place, women are depicted as rather overbearing figures. Billy becomes “senile because of damage to his brain the airplane crash”, thus the responsibilities of needing to manage Valencia’s funeral and Billy’s considerable business interests suddenly fall onto Barbara, Billy’s daughter. As Barbara becomes the “head of the family”, the overwhelming
Americans are constantly “trying to construct a life that made sense” from things found “in gift shops”. This reveals the extremely materialistic nature and mindset of many Americans’— they believe that money can buy happiness, and constructing a life on the shallow things is the only sensible way of living. Just like the stereotypical Americans, Valencia is like that too. When Billy gives a ring as an anniversary gift to Valencia, she purposely dramatizes her reaction so that she attracts attention, by saying “Oh, my God” especially loud. Although Billy does not genuinely like Valencia, he buys her extravagant gifts just to keep her happy. This instance highlights Valencia’s desperate need for attention. Furthermore, Valencia is also illustrated as superficial in terms of her perception of war. She regards wars to be glorious, thus she tends to “associate sex and glamor with war”. This “simple-minded” behaviour of Valencia’s, once again, points out how shallow women are in Vonnegut’s