Published in 1969, Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five is a novel written in and about troubled times. As Vonnegut finished the novel in 1968, America saw the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy. In the South, Black people and their supporters were struggling to overturn centuries of racial inequality under the law. At times, the struggle became violent. American values were being convulsed by the coming of age of the baby boomers. Never before had young people felt so certain in their rebellion against their parents' values.
The United States was involved in a costly, unpopular, and deadly war in Vietnam. In 1968, the psychologically devastating Tet Offensive...
