War and Bad Breath

"Trout's leading robot looked like a human being, and could talk and dance and so on, and go out with girls. And nobody held it against him that he dropped jellied gasoline on people. But they found his halitosis unforgivable. But then he cleared that up, and he was welcomed to the human race."

-pg 214

In this particular passage, Vonnegut is describing a story by Billy Pilgrim's favorite science fiction writer, Kilgore Trout. However, Vonnegut does not pass up this moment in order to bring to light a characteristic of human nature regarding the blind acceptance of war. Vonnegut is placing "dropping jellied gasoline on people" and "halitosis" on the same level, and further makes hurting other human beings to be more acceptable. He is not creating this comparison in order for it to be taken seriously (similar to the rest of the novel), rather he is creating this comparison in order for the reader to make a realization about human acceptance of the war. Most humans accept war as a necessary evil- of course many people do not support it, yet war continues to be looked upon as something that must be done. Most people look at war as one single action, yet fail to recognize the smaller actions within war, such as hurting other human beings. Mankind can forgive people who do this "necessary evil," yet many times steer clear of people who have simple undesirable qualities such as "halitosis." Although Vonnegut takes this comparison to the extreme (dropping jellied gasoline is not a common practice in war, and no one would actually exclude someone on the basis of halitosis), such extremity forces the reader to reflect upon common beliefs about war and its acceptability as a whole.

In your opinion, do you think that this novel effectively brought war to the extreme in order for a greater truth to be exposed? Also, is this tactic what people need in order to recognize that war is not what people crack it up to be?