Slaughterhouse-One

This is my first response post concerning the book I'm currently reading, Slaughterhouse-Five. The title of the book has yet to be explained, and I'm almost halfway through the book. I've found it interesting and entertaining thus far. Humor is definitely a huge part of the book, but it's not laugh-out-loud funny. Vonnegut is a satirist, and he comments on everything from religion to authority to, most importantly, war and violence.

The main character's name alone is a comment I think. Billy Pilgrim's last name is typically defined as one on a religious journey of some sort. I suppose that means that by the end of this book, if Vonnegut's ironic style continues, Billy Pilgrim will have lost any sort of religion he ever had. So far, the book reminds me of Catch-22 a lot, but it's certainly not as painful to read. Catch-22 was a war book that didn't include time travel, and was made up entirely of contradictions that were supposed to be funny. I personally got tired of them very quickly. In Slaughterhouse-Five, however, the ironies are entertaining and the black humor stands out quite a bit from anything else I've ever read.