Paul Lazzaro and the Paradox of American Soldiers' Morality
One of Kurt Vonnegut’s major focuses when creating his “anti war-novel” Slaughterhouse-Five is to dispel different things he believes to be false regarding the conventional wisdom surrounding war. I believe that one of the things Vonnegut wants to challenge is the idea that all soldiers who are deployed in armed conflict zones are heros. One way Vonnegut does this is definitely through the story of Billy Pilgrim. Billy is incompetent and uninterested in the American War effort and through the lense of Trafalmadorain logic, Vonnegut exposes us to this idea that Billy has no impact on the ultimate American success or failure in the war. But most of all, Vonnegut shows us this through the character of Paul Lazzaro, an American POW of the Germans with Billy. Lazzaro in a normal war-novel might be portrayed heroically: he is clearly a hardened fighter who will not let anything get in his way and block his goals. Unfortuenly, Lazzaro is obsessed not with the Americans winning the war or A...