Slaughterhouse-Five

Slaughterhouse-Five, or, The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death is a novel written by Kurt Vonnegut. Released in 1969, it recounts the temporally fragmented life of Billy Pilgrim.

It is (arguably) Vonnegut's most well-known novel and is notable for its main characters' non-linear progression through time.

Characters[]

Billy Pilgrim
Roland Weary - an extremely mean and cruel antitank gunner whom Billy meets in Luxembourg
Paul Lazzaro - a prisoner of war who takes up a mission of vengeance against Billy for supposedly causing the death of Roland
Edgar Derby - a somewhat old soldier and high school teacher in extremely good shape
Eliot Rosewater - a veteran with a love for science fiction
Valencia Merble Pilgrim - Billy's wife, the daughter of a rich man
Barbara Pilgrim - Billy's daughter
Robert Pilgrim - Billy's son
Billy Pilgrim's mother
Howard W. Campbell, Jr.
Montana Wildhack - an actress kidnapped by the Tralfamadorians
Lionel Merble - Billy's father-in-law
The "Blue Fairy Godmother" - a British POW
Kurt Vonnegut - As he was present at the real world firebombing of Dresden, the author appears at several points in the novel
Bertrand Copeland Rumfoord - an Air Force veteran who meets Billy in the hospital
Werner Gluck - a young German who guards Billy and Edgar while in slaughterhouse-five

Publisher's summary[]

Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic, is one of the world’s great antiwar books. Centering on the infamous World War II firebombing of Dresden, the novel is the result of what Kurt Vonnegut described as a twenty-three-year struggle to write a book about what he had witnessed as an American prisoner of war. It combines historical fiction, science fiction, autobiography, and satire in an account of the life of Billy Pilgrim, a barber’s son turned draftee turned optometrist turned alien abductee. As Vonnegut had, Billy experiences the destruction of Dresden as a POW. Unlike Vonnegut, he experiences time travel, or coming “unstuck in time.”

An instant bestseller, Slaughterhouse-Five made Kurt Vonnegut a cult hero in American literature, a reputation that only strengthened over time, despite his being banned and censored by some libraries and schools for content and language. But it was precisely those elements of Vonnegut’s writing—the political edginess, the genre-bending inventiveness, the frank violence, the transgressive wit—that have inspired generations of readers not just to look differently at the world around them but to find the confidence to say something about it.

Fifty years after its initial publication at the height of the Vietnam War, Vonnegut's portrayal of political disillusionment, PTSD, and postwar anxiety feels as relevant, darkly humorous, and profoundly affecting as ever, an enduring beacon through our own era’s uncertainties.

Plot[]

Chapter One[]

Before starting the actual plot, Vonnegut recounts the story of how he wrote his novel about the firebombing of Dresden.

Chapter Two[]

After surviving a deadly plane crash (and in 1968), an optometrist named Billy Pilgrim starts writing letters about an alien species known as Tralfamadorians who exist out of flow with normal time. Concerned by the letters, his daughter Barbara visits Billy and tries to convince him that he is crazy. This fails, and Billy begins to recount when he first noticed that he was unstuck in time.

In 1944, after enlisting into the Army, Billy was sent to Luxembourg to fight in World War II. This was near the end of the War (specifically during the Battle of the Bulge) and Billy soon found himself behind the German lives. Inexperienced in combat, Billy is found by three soldiers (including a young antitank gunner named Roland Weary). While wandering with these soldiers, Billy first experiences jumps in time - flitting through his own future and past. After Billy experiences his first discontinuity, Roland's fellow soldiers (whom he has dubbed the "Three Musketeers") abandon him and Billy. Extremely angry at this, Roland beats Billy and is about to permanently cripple him before they are found by a platoon of German soldiers.

Chapter Three and Four[]

Roland and Billy are captured by the platoon while their two fellow soldiers are killed. As the Germans march the two through the snow (with Weary being forced to wear painful wooden clogs), Billy has a flash-forward to his life as an optometrist. Later, he has a longer flashback of his life during the Vietnam War. Soon, the two (alongside a line of various other prisoners of war) cross into Germany. Weary and Billy are put onto different train cars. As the trains roll through Germany, Billy flashes forwards to his abduction by the Tralfamadorians. Shortly after his daughter's wedding, Billy was walking outside when he was found by the Tralfamadorians and brought aboard their ship.

As Billy is flashing forwards in time, Weary begins to succumb from an infection. As he dies, he claims that his death is solely the fault of Billy Pilgrim. Another prisoner of war in the cart (Paul Lazzaro) vows to avenge the dying Weary. Before the train reaches its stop, Weary dies.

Once in Germany, Billy is brought to a prison for American POWs (which was formerly an "extermination camp for Russian prisoners of war"). While the Germans make their captives strip and examine their bodies, Billy thinks of the Tralfamadorians.

Chapter Five[]

While the Trafalmadorians transport Billy to their homeworld, he flashes back to a childhood trip to the Grand Canyon and Carlsbad Caverns and then flashes forwards to World War II. After getting their clothes back, the American prisoners are welcomed by a group of jolly British prisoners of war singing "Hail, Hail, the Gang's All Here". Once indoors, the British prisoners host a performance of Cinderella which brings Billy such mirth that he shrieks with laughter and is brought to the prison's makeship hospital.

While tied to a bed and attended to by Edgar Derby (who reads from The Red Badge of Courage while watching over Billy), he flashes forwards to a post-War stay at a mental hospital shortly after his wedding. While in the mental hospital, Billy met a fellow veteran named Eliot Rosewater who introduced him to the works of Kilgore Trout (who became Billy's favorite author). While in the hospital, Billy was visited by his mother and his new wife.

Soon, Billy travels forwards to the Tralfamadorian zoo. He is kept completely naked by the Tralfamadorians and watched at all times. Though he is effectively nothing more than a somewhat amusing creature to them, the Tralfamadorians begin to communicate with Billy and introduce their unique worldview and philosophy to him.

Billy then travels to his honeymoon with Valencia - where his son Robert was conceived. While stepping out to "take a leak", he briefly flashes back to the prison camp (where he accidentally runs into barbed wire while still somewhat high on morphine) and then back to his honeymoon, then back to the prison camp.

At three AM, Paul Lazzaro is brought into the hospital after having his arm broken in a fight with one of the British prisoners of war. He is soon followed by a German major who promises the British POWs that their American counterparts will soon be moved from the camp and put to work in Dresden. During this, Billy goes to sleep and wakes up back in 1968. Worried about her father's well-being, Barbara sends an "oil-burner man" to his house. Shortly after the oil-burner man fixes Billy's furnace. While waiting for the oil-burner man, Billy flashes back to the zoo.

To begin a voyeuristic show, the Tralfamadorians brought an extremely attractive motion picture star named Montana Wildhack into the zoo. At first, Montana was extremely frightened by her kidnappers but soon grows comfortable with her new environment. Billy then returns to 1968 just as the oil-burner man arrives. Once his furnace is fixed, Billy returns to his job as an optometrist but has to return home after talking about the Tralfamadorians to one of his patients.

Chapters Six and Seven[]

The day before Billy is sent to Dresden, he is first noticed by Paul Lazzaro. He promises to wreak vengeance on Billy after the War (and indeed he does, as he has Billy killed in 1976 after an address on flying saucers) but he and Edgar Derby (who is elected "head American") to Dresden. Once in Dresden, the Americans are lodged in an abandoned slaughterhouse (specifically, the titular slaughterhouse-five).

Twenty-five years later, as Billy is flying to an optometry convention in Montreal with his father-in-law and a barbershop quarter (along with several other optometrists), his plane crashes into a Vermont mountain. The only survivor of the crash, Billy is rescued by some Austrian ski instructors (whom he views as golliwogs due to his delirious state and their ski masks) and is unconscious for two days while recovering from his injuries. While unconscious, Billy flashes through time.

While guarded by a young Dresdener named Werner Gluck, Billy and Edgar begin work. While working at a factory making malt syrup, Billy spoons some of the excess syrup onto a spoon and begins eating from it. After seeing Edgar, he gives him a syrupy spoon.

Chapter Eight[]

Shortly before the Allies firebomb Dresden, Howard W. Campbell, Jr. visits the American POWs trying to recruit people for a crackteam fighting the Soviets (and presumably working for the Nazis). Howard finds little support from the POWs (and a detractor in the form of Edgar Derby) before air raid sirens sound. The POWs are brought to a meat locker. While waiting for the bombs to stop falling, Billy flashes forwards to his friendship with Kilgore Trout.

Billy met Kilgore for the first time after he found the author haranguing a group of newspaper boys who he had effectively hired. On discovering that Billy is a fan of his writings, Kilgore is amazed (as he has barely ever gotten paid for his work and only got a singular fan letter before, this being from Eliot Rosewater). Billy invites Kilgore to his eighteenth wedding anniversary. While Kilgore speaks with a somewhat dim girl, Billy finds himself strangely affected by the anniversary's barbershop quartet. He flees into his bedroom and flashes back to the firebombing of Dresden.

Billy and the rest of the American POWs are saved from the bombing by staying within the meat locker until the bombing ends. The day after the bombing, they emerge into the charred ruins of Dresden (which is described as being almost like the surface of the Moon). While trudging through the ruins, they find absolutely no survivors until they come to an inn which miraculously survived the bombings.

Chapters Nine and Ten[]

After learning about her husband's plane crash, Valencia frantically drives to the hospital. Due to her extreme distraught, Valencia gets into a car crash. She survives the accident but is killed by carbon monoxide poisoning while trying to drive to the hospital. While Billy recovers from his injuries, he is noticed by an Air Force veteran named Bertrand Copeland Rumfoord who is writing a book on Dresden. Initially, Bertrand is extremely dismissive of Billy - thinking that he is nothing more than a vegetable before Billy recovers enough to speak. Even then, Bertrand tries to claim that Billy has echolailia (though the doctors do not believe him).

While still in the hospital, Billy flashes back to Dresden - specifically, his only happy memory from his time as a POW. Shortly after World War II ended, Billy rode through the deserted streets of Dresden in a coffin-shaped horse-drawn cart in a state of absolute bliss until he was noticed by two survivors. These survivors pointed out the extremely pained state of the horses, making Billy weep. Shortly after this, all three were arrested by the Soviets. Billy was sent back to America shortly after this.

Shortly after leaving the hospital, Billy travels to New York City in the hopes that he can get on TV. While in NYC, he visits a seedy bookstore and finds several books by Kilgore Trout. While Billy does not get onto TV, he does get onto a radio show (but gets kicked out once he starts talking about the Tralfamadorians). While still in New York, Billy flashes to the Tralfamadorian zoo - where Montana is pregnant with his child.

In the final scene of the novel, we return to Dresden. Shortly before the War ended, Billy and a Maori soldier excavated a hole filled with the corpses of Dresdeners. During the excavation, the Maori dies from dry heaving and Edgar Derby is killed after he tries to steal a teapot. Billy is left to hear the birds singing as World War II ends.

Worldbuilding[]

The Tralfamadorians are a race which exist in four dimensions (x, y, z, and time). They are roughly plunger-shaped with hand-shaped, cyclopean heads. They are extremely fatalist (being able to view every event in history at the same time and having little if any influence on it) and use flying saucers. They have five sexes and view humans as having seven different sexes.
Tralfamadore is the homeworld of the Tralfamadorians. A "small" planet with a cyanide atmosphere, it is almost completely inhospitable to human life. As such, the Tralfamadorians have to build a small geodesic dome to hold Billy and Montana. The planet is an obscene distance from Earth and Tralfamadorian visitors to the distant blue marble have to use time warps to travel between the two planets in reasonable times.
According to a Tralfamadorian that speaks with Billy, the Tralfamadorians destroy the universe accidentally while trying to test out new fuels.

In-author continuity[]

Howard W. Campbell Jr. was the main character of Vonnegut's previous novel Mother Night. Some of his propaganda pieces are shown in Chapter Five.
Eliot Rosewater first appeared in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater.
The Tralfamadorians were previously mentioned in Vonnegut's novel The Sirens of Titan, with Salo being a messenger from Tralfamadore. The planet Tralfamadore and its inhabitants later appear in Hocus Pocus.
The fictional author Kilgore Trout is referenced. This author (a reference to Theodore Sturgeon) first appeared in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater and appears in several other novels by Vonnegut (most notably Breakfast of Champions and Timequake) and is used as a pseudonym by Philip José Farmer for Venus on the Half-Shell and is referenced in Salman Rushdie's The Ground Beneath Her Feet along with the novel Fallen Angels (written by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and Michael Flynn) and the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen graphic novel Black Dossier.
The city of Ilium, New York (Billy's home city) first appeared in Vonnegut's debut novel, Player Piano and later appeared in Cat's Cradle along with three of his short stories (Deer in the Works, Poor Little Rich Town, and Ed Luby's Key Club).
Bertrand Copeland Rumfoord is presumably a relative of Winston Niles Rumfoord from The Sirens of Titan.

Sources[]

Goodreads
Wikipedia

Title	Author	Significance	Release date
Mother Night	Kurt Vonnegut	1962	A novel by the same author with similar themes
The Time Traveler's Wife	Audrey Niffenengger	2003	A novel with a similar plot
Gravity's Rainbow	Thomas Pynchon	1973	A blackly comedic novel set in World War II
The Naked and the Dead	Norman Mailer	1948	A blackly comedic novel set in World War II
Catch-22	Joseph Heller	1961	A blackly comedic novel set in World War II
Closely Watched Trains	Bohumil Hrabal	1965	A novel with similar themes and a similar setting
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close	Jonathan Safran Foer	2005	A novel that also features the firebombing of Dresden