Slaughterhouse-Five

This is the great American anti-war novel disguised as science fiction. Vonnegut survived Dresden as a prisoner of war, and it took him over two decades to write about it, so the book carries real grief under its jokes. Read it if you have ever tried to make sense of something senseless, or if you want to see how humor can hold horror without letting go of either.

1. 1

   Act 1

   A promise about corpses

   The novel opens with a first-person authorial voice (Kurt Vonnegut himself) stating his intention to write about the bombing of Dresden, which he witnessed as a prisoner of war. 'All this happened, more or less,' he tells us, and already the ground is unsteady. The narrator visits his old war buddy Bernard V. O'Hare and O'Hare's wife Mary. Mary catches him off guard. She is furious that the men might write a war book that glorifies war, one starring handsome actors like Frank Sinatra and John Wayne. Babies were killed in that war, she says. the narrator promises the book will be called 'The Children's Crusade' and will not glorify war. He explains the shape of what follows: a jumbled, time-hopping 'telegraphic schizophrenic' manner, because 'there is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects.' The narrator says he wrote the book with the help of a grant from the Guggenheim Foundation, and that he went back to Dresden with O'Hare in 1967. The narrator says the book is about Billy Pilgrim, who was a chaplain's assistant in World War II and was captured by the Germans in December 1944 during the Battle of the Bulge. The book about war will not march. It will drift, the way memory does when memory has seen too much.

2. 2

   Act 2

   Unstuck

   Billy Pilgrim is introduced as a tall, weak, funny-looking optometrist in Ilium, New York, born in 1922, who has become 'unstuck in time.' Moments seize him without warning: In 1944, behind German lines during the Battle of the Bulge, Billy finds himself as a young soldier behind enemy lines and is captured by the Germans along with other American soldiers, including Roland Weary, a vengeful, patriotic bully who blames Billy for their capture. Roland Weary dies of gangrene, blaming Billy for his death and convincing fellow prisoner Paul Lazzaro to vow to avenge him by killing Billy Pilgrim. That promise will follow Billy for the rest of his life, and past it. In the present, Billy's daughter Barbara confronts him after he goes on the radio to talk about the planet Tralfamadore, shouting, 'Father... what are we going to *do* with you?' Billy Pilgrim gives a letter to the Ilium newspaper describing his being 'unstuck in time' and his abduction by Tralfamadorians, who are described as two feet tall, green, and shaped like toilet plungers (plumber's friends), with a single eye in the palm of a hand. His daughter finds the letter deeply embarrassing. Billy is not embarrassed. He is simply telling the truth as it arrives to him, out of order.

3. 3

   Act 3

   Slaughterhouse-Five

   Billy and the other prisoners are taken to Dresden and housed in a slaughterhouse called Schlachthof-fünf (Slaughterhouse-Five); the Germans give them each a number, and the number is written on his coat. The Germans tell him that Dresden will not be bombed and that it is a safe city; the prisoners arrive in Dresden and are taken to a slaughterhouse, where the Germans tell them they will be working in a factory producing vitamin-enriched malt syrup for pregnant women. Then, during dinner, the sirens sound. The POWs head to shelter, and the firebombing of Dresden begins. During the Allied firebombing of Dresden, Billy, Edgar Derby, and others survive deep underground in the meat locker of Slaughterhouse-Five; Billy believes 100,000 perish. When they emerge, the city is destroyed 'like the moon.' The Germans put the prisoners to work digging corpses out of the rubble, warning that looting will be punished, and the bodies begin to rot and liquefy. Edgar Derby discovers a dancing figurine, pockets it, and is executed by a Nazi firing squad for looting. Edgar Derby is executed by a Nazi firing squad for the 'crime' of taking a teapot (or a dancing figurine) from the ruins, a moment Billy witnesses. So it goes.

4. 4

   Act 4

   The zoo and the ending Billy already knows

   After the war, Billy completes optometry school, marries Valencia Merble, the daughter of the school's owner, and becomes a successful optometrist in Ilium, New York. They have two children, Robert and Barbara. Robert becomes a troubled adolescent and is caught by police vandalizing a Catholic cemetery; Billy bribes the police to let him go. Billy's son Robert is introduced as a troubled adolescent who later becomes a Green Beret in the Vietnam War. Billy and his father-in-law Lionel Merble board a private plane for an optometry convention; Billy looks out the window, sees men in ski masks, and has a premonition the plane will crash. The plane crashes en route; Lionel is killed but Billy is found alive and taken to hospital. A distressed Valencia, driving to the hospital, has multiple accidents; her car's exhaust is destroyed and she dies of carbon monoxide poisoning. Billy believes he was abducted by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore in 1967; they are shaped like plumber's friends and see in four dimensions, perceiving all moments of time simultaneously. Billy is put in a zoo on Tralfamadore, displayed naked in a geodesic dome, and given a mate, Montana Wildhack, a film actress star from Earth. Montana is afraid of the Tralfamadorians at first but comes to trust them, and she and Billy have a child together, whom Montana names Billy Jr. The Tralfamadorians tell Billy that they see in four dimensions, perceiving all moments of time simultaneously. The Tralfamadorians say they know how the universe will end, and that a Tralfamadorian test pilot will press a button that will destroy the universe, and that they cannot change the past, present, or future. Billy, having time-traveled to his death, knows he will be assassinated by Paul Lazzaro in Chicago in 1976 after giving a speech about Tralfamadore and the nature of time; Lazzaro is an old man at the time. So it goes.

• BBilly PilgrimA tall, weak, funny-looking optometrist born in 1922 who becomes unstuck in time. He wants only to live quietly, but war, grief, and aliens keep rearranging his life, and he ends up knowing the date of his own death.
• KKurt Vonnegut (the narrator)The author himself, a Dresden survivor who opens the book promising Mary O'Hare a war story with no heroes. He frames Billy's story as his own promise kept.
• PPaul LazzaroA vengeful fellow POW who promises the dying Roland Weary he will kill Billy Pilgrim. The promise outlives the war by decades.
• EEdgar DerbyAn older POW who protects Billy from Lazzaro and is elected the men's leader. He survives the firebombing, then is executed for pocketing a trinket from the ruins.
• RRoland WearyA vengeful, patriotic bully who blames Billy for their capture. He dies of gangrene and passes his grudge to Lazzaro.
• VValencia MerbleBilly's heavy, loving wife, daughter of the optometry school's owner. She dies of carbon monoxide poisoning rushing to the hospital after Billy's plane crash.
• BBarbaraBilly's daughter, angry and embarrassed by his claims about Tralfamadore. She wants her father to act normal; he cannot.
• RRobertBilly's son, a troubled adolescent who vandalizes a Catholic cemetery, reforms, and becomes a Green Beret in Vietnam.
• MMontana WildhackA movie star from Earth placed in the Tralfamadorian zoo as Billy's mate. Afraid at first, she comes to love Billy and names their child Billy Jr.
• MMary O'HareBernard O'Hare's wife, who shames the narrator out of writing a glorified war book. Her anger shapes the whole novel.

Slaughterhouse-Five

'So it goes'

The dancing figurine

The geodesic dome zoo

The ending gives us Billy's death in advance: shot by an elderly Paul Lazzaro in Chicago in 1976, right after a speech about Tralfamadore and the nature of time. Billy knows, tells people anyway, and does nothing to stop it, which forces the reader to decide what that means. One reading: the Tralfamadorian view is genuine peace, since Billy is alive in every other moment, and accepting a fixed death is the only sane response to a universe no one can change. Another, darker reading: it is learned helplessness, a trauma victim so broken by Dresden that he treats his own murder as weather. The book refuses to choose, and that refusal is why it lands. Vonnegut closes the frame he opened with Mary O'Hare's demand that the war not be glorified: Billy's death is quiet, absurd, and unheroic, exactly the anti-glory the narrator promised. The last word on death is the same as the first: so it goes.

1. 1.Is Billy's Tralfamadorian fatalism wisdom or a symptom? Argue whether accepting a predetermined universe, including his own assassination, is peace or surrender, using the zoo and the death scene as evidence.
2. 2.The novel's structure has 'no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects.' How does the time-hopping form enact trauma, and could a chronological telling of Dresden have been honest?
3. 3.Mary O'Hare demands a book that does not glorify war. Trace how Vonnegut keeps that promise through Billy's passivity, Derby's execution, and the absence of heroism, and whether the humor ever risks undermining the protest.

Anyone who has ever tried to write or talk about something too big to say, and readers who think anti-war fiction must be grim, since this one is funny in the teeth of horror. Also ideal for fans of science fiction who want the aliens to mean something.

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