Slaughterhouse Five Kurt Vonnegut

Summary
Slaughterhouse Five is the story of Billy Pilgrim, a decidedly non-heroic man who has
become "unstuck in time." He travels back and forth in time, visiting his birth, death, all
the moments in between reeatedly and out of order. !he novel is framed by "haters
#ne and !en, in which $onnegut himself talks about the difficulties of writing the novel
and the effects of %resden on his own life. &n between, Billy Pilgrim's life is given to us
out of order and in small fragments. For the sake of clarity, this short summary will ut
Billy's life in chronological order, although in the novel every chater sans events over
the course of many years.
Billy is born in ()** in &lium, +ew ,ork. He grows into a weak and awkward young
man, studying briefly at the &lium School of #tometry briefly before he is drafted. -fter
minimal training, he is sent to .uroe right in the middle of the Battle of the Bulge. He is
catured behind /erman lines0 before his cature is the first time he gets unstuck in time.
Billy and the other -merican P#1s 2risoners of war3 are temorarily shied to a cam
full of dying 4ussians and a few amered British officers. !he -mericans then are
moved to %resden, a beautiful /erman city that has no ma5or industries and no
significant military resence. +o one e6ects %resden to be bombed. But in the san of
one night in February of ()78, %resden is bombed until almost nothing is left. (9:,:::
eole die. Billy and the other P#1s wait out the bombing in a meat cellar. !he ne6t day
at noon, they come out and find a landscae that looks like the surface of the moon. 1ith
no food or water, the P#1s and four guards trek out to the suburbs. !he -merican
risoners stay in an innkeeers stable for a while, but soon the authorities round u
P#1s to e6cavate the city for bodies. 1hen that work is over, Billy and the other men
return to the stable to wait out the rest of the war. &n ;ay, 4ussians take the area and
Billy is reatriated.
He goes back to &lium to finish otometry school. -fter getting engaged to the daughter
of the school's owner, Billy has a mental breakdown and is committed to a veteran's
hosital. !here, he is introduced to the science fiction of <ilgore !rout by a fellow
atient. -fter he is release, he marries $alencia as lanned. Her father is wealthy, and
with a little hel from him, Billy grows rich. Billy and $alencia have two children.
#n the night of his daughter's wedding, Billy 2as he claims3 is kidnaed by aliens from
the lanet !ralfamadore. !he !ralfamadorians e6ist in the fourth dimension, and
cons=uently they have a comletely different view of time. For them, all moments
haen simultaneously and always. !hey take him to their world and ut him in a >oo,
where he mates with an actress called ;ontana 1ildhack. ?sing a time war, they return
him to a earth almost immediately after the moment that he left, so no one notices that he
has been missing for months. He says nothing about the events until he suffers head
in5uries in a lane crash. His wife dies almost immediately afterward. -fter he goes
home, he runs off to +ew ,ork and goes on a radio talk show to talk about his alien
abduction e6eriences and the !ralfamadorian concet of time. His daughter Barbara,
5ust twenty-one years old, suddenly motherless and with a father who aears to be
mentally unbalanced, takes care of Billy but feels a great deal of resentment and
frustration.
Billy claims to know how he will die. &n ()@A, after the ?.S. is slit into etty nations and
"hicago is hydrogen-bombed "by angry china men," Billy is killed by a high-owered
laser gun.
Major Themes
Time and memory
!he science fiction elements of the novel include time travel. Billy leas in time,
e6erience his life's events out of order and reeatedly. He learns on the alien world of
!rafalmadore that all time haens simultaneously0 thus, no one really dies. But this
ermanence has its dark sideB brutal acts also live on forever. ;emory is one of the
novel's imortant themes0 because of their memories, $onnegut and Billy cannot move
ast the %resden massacre. Billy leas back in time to %resden again and again, but at
critical oints we see %resden simly because Billy relives it in his memory.
Narrative versus non-narrative and anti-narrative
!his is a broad theme that encomasses many imortant ideas. $onnegut is interested in
rotecting his novel from becoming a conventional war narrative, the kind of
conventional narrative that makes war look like something e6citing or fun. !hroughout
the book, we see narratives of this kind in history te6ts and the minds of characters. But
this novel is more interested in non-narrative, like the nonsense =uestion asked by birds at
the novel's end, or anti-narrative, like the out-of-order leaing through the many arts of
Billy's life. $onnegut does not write about heroes. Billy Pilgrim is more like a victim.
The relationship between people and the fores that at on them
!his theme is closely connected to the idea of narrative. $onnegut's characters have
almost no agency. !hey are driven by forces that are simly too huge for any one man to
make much of a difference. $onnegut drives home this oint by introducing us to the
!rafalmadorians and their concet of time, in which all events are fated and imossible to
change.
!eptane
#ne of the book's most famous lines is "So it goes," reeated whenever a character dies.
Billy Pilgrim is deely assive, acceting everything that befalls him. &t makes him able
to forgive anyone for anything, and he never seems to become angry. But this accetance
has it roblems. 1hen Billy drives through a black ghetto and ignores the suffering he
sees there, we see the roblem with comlete accetance. $onnegut values the
forgiveness and eace that come with accetance, but his novel could not be an "anti-war
book" if it called on readers to comletely accet their world.
"uman dignity
&n $onnegut's view, war is not heroic or glamorous. &t is messy, often disgusting, and it
robs men of their dignity. !he roblem of dignity comes u again and again in the novel,
as we see how easily human dignity can be denied by others. But $onnegut also
=uestions some concetions of dignity0 he sees that they have a lace in creating
conventional war narratives that make war look heroic.
#harater $ist
Kurt Vonnegut
!he novelist inserts himself in the sections of "haters #ne and !en that frame Billy
Pilgrim's story. For many years, $onnegut tried to write a book about %resden but found
himself unable to handle the ro5ect. He aears within the Billy Pilgrim story very
briefly, in the literary e=uivalent of a cameo. !he framing sections are vital in clarifying
$onnegut's goals in writing the novel, among them the ublication of an anti-war book.
%ernard &'"are
$onnegut's old war buddy, catured with him and held as a P#1 in %resden. $onnegut
looks him u years later so that they can reminisce about their war e6eriences. But the
two men find they cannot remember anything good.
Mary &'"are
!he novel is dedicated to her. She is Bernard's wife and she initially views $onnegut's
novel-in-rogress critically, worrying that he will write a book that glorifies war.
%illy (ilgrim )in short*
-n unconventional rotagonist for a war novel, Billy is weak, assive, and often
ridiculous. He is totally unsuited for war, and he nearly dies wandering behind /erman
lines during the Battle of the Bulge. -fter the war, he becomes an otometrist, marries a
rich girl, and comes to believe that he has been abducted by aliens called
!rafalmadorians. He is "unstuck in time," meaning that he e6eriences the events of his
life out of order again and again.
%illy (ilgrim
Billy Pilgrim is the unlikeliest of antiwar heroes. -n unoular and comlacent weakling
even before the war 2he refers sinking to swimming3, he becomes a 5oke as a soldier. He
trains as a chalainCs assistant, a duty that earns him disgust from his eers. 1ith scant
rearation for armed conflict, no weaons, and even an imroer uniform, he is thrust
abrutly into duty at the Battle of the Bulge. !he farcical sectacle created by BillyCs
inaroriate clothing accentuates the absurdity of such a scrawny, mild-mannered
soldier. His a>ure toga, a leftover scra of stage curtain, and his fur-lined overcoat,
several si>es too small, throw his incongruity into relief. !hey underscore a central ironyB
such a creature could walk through war, oblivious yet unscathed, while so many others
with more aroriate attire and rovisions erish. &t is in this shocked and hysically
e6hausted state that Billy first comes Dunstuck in timeE and begins swinging to and fro
through the events of his life, ast and future.
Billy lives a life full of indignity and so, erhas, has no great fear of death. He is oddly
suited, therefore, to the !ralfamadorian hilosohy of acceting death. !his fact may
oint to an interretation of the !ralfamadorians as a figment of BillyCs disturbed mind,
an elaborate coing mechanism to e6lain the meaningless slaughter Billy has witnessed.
By uttering DSo it goesE after each death, the narrator, like Billy, does not diminish the
gravity of death but rather lends an e=uali>ing dignity to all death, no matter how random
or ironic, how immediate or removed. BillyCs father dies in a hunting accident 5ust as
Billy is about to go off to war. So it goes. - former hobo dies in BillyCs railway car while
declaring the conditions not bad at all. So it goes. #ne hundred thirty thousand innocent
eole die in %resden. So it goes. $alencia Pilgrim accidentally kills herself with carbon
mono6ide after turning bright blue. So it goes. Billy Pilgrim is killed by an assassinCs
bullet at e6actly the time he has redicted, in the reali>ation of a thirty-some-year-old
death threat. So it goes. Billy awaits death calmly, without fear, knowing the e6act hour
at which it will come. &n so doing, he gains a degree of control over his own dignity that
he has lacked throughout most of his life.
!he novel centers on Billy Pilgrim to a degree that e6cludes the develoment of the
suorting characters, who e6ist in the te6t only as they relate to BillyCs e6erience of
events.
+oland ,eary
-n anti-tank gunner who gets catured with Billy. %eely lonely, he imagines war stories
full of camaraderie and adventure. %umb, fat, and cruel, he dies of gangrene and blames
Billy.
-dgar .erby
4eferred to consistently as "oor .dgar %erby" or "oor old .dgar %erby," %erby is a
forty-four-year-old who had to ull strings to be allowed to fight. Back home, he is a high
school teacher. He is shot after the %resden bombing for stealing a teaot.
(aul $a/arro
!iny, weak, hysically reulsive, Fa>arro is foul-temered and cruel. He talks about
tracking down eole after the war to send hitmen after them. He holds that revenge is
life's sweetest leasure.
Valenia
Billy's wife. She is the overweight daughter of the owner of Billy's otometry school. She
is comletely devoted to Billy. 1hen Billy is in5ured in a lane crash, she dies of carbon
mono6ide oisoning on the way to the hosital.
%arbara
Billy's daughter. She is resonsible for him after his in5uries and $alencia's death, and the
burden makes her resentful and icky.
+obert
Billy's son. !hrough he was a troublemaker in high school, 4obert goes on to be a /reen
Beret who fights in $ietnam.