The author even inserts himself as a character throughout key events, such as the latrine at the POW camp and digging in the corpse mines in Dresden. The insertions serve to remind the reader that though fiction, the events described in the novel actually happened, to people like Billy Pilgrim/Kurt Vonnegut.

However, Vonnegut also uses several techniques not found in the works of noted memoir writers such as Tobias Wolff and Anne Frank. For example, Vonnegut also employs a third-person point-of-view, where an omniscient narrator goes into the minds of several other characters. Thus, in addition to Billy Pilgrim, the reader also gains insight into the motivations and thoughts of other characters as well. Vonnegut also employs a time-shifting progression that takes the reader back and forth from the present (1968), to the meat locker in World War II to Billy's birth (1920) and even to his death (1976). The...
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