Slaughterhouse-Five

Read our complete notes on the novel “Slaughterhouse-Five” by Kurt Vonnegut. Our notes cover Slaughterhouse-Five summary, themes, and critical analysis.

Introduction

Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) is a famous American novelist who earned fame from his war-time memory-based satirical novel Slaughterhouse-Five. Its title is a satire on how they survived in a slaughterhouse. His first work was Player Piano (1952), and four subsequent works came after it. This Dresden work was his sixth work, which brought him fame, and is still read. It was written in 1968 in Iowa. It was the time when America was escalating war with Vietnam. It was first published in 1969. Vonnegut has given a choice subtitle with this novel, which is The Children’s Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death. 

This novel is a recollection of his second World War memories. He joined the US Army in 1943 and was sent to the battlefield in December 1944. His unit was captured during the war with Germans at Bulge, France, and the members were taken as POWs. They were later taken from the POW camp to Dresden and kept at a concrete-block slaughterhouse, which was converted into a detention facility.

It was 1945, and Germany was losing the war, and the allies were ferociously bombing German cities regardless of civilian or military areas. It was then when Dresden, a beautiful city, was made a heap of rubble.

According to an estimate, about 40,000 tons of explosives were used by the allies when Dresden was being bombed. This bombing took the lives of about 1,35,000 people according to this novel, though there is a debate about the exact number. Kurt and his fellow prisoners watched it happening, and these memories later became a part of Slaughterhouse-Five. He has questioned this excessive bombing and repeatedly called it a war crime. 

A reason behind the author’s intention to write this novel is America’s Vietnam war. It went into war with the communist part of Vietnam in 1954, and this continued till 1975. Pacifists wanted to bridle the war-mania of the then-White House administration, and one of the efforts was this novel. The deaths it recollected were a commentary on the horrors of war that Vietnamese battlefields would see.

It was a recollection of the carnage of Germans and an indication of the revival of  history. It was a slap on the face of an indifferent, brutal, senseless government, which was sending American soldiers to Vietnam to fight a useless war and die helplessly.

Its fame hasn’t waned because war and violence have not yet been out of style, and still, the brutalities are repeated. Los Angeles Times reviewed it as a satirical, compelling work. It is held a classic of American literature and praised for its inventiveness and structure. It was the work that made critics compare him with Hemingway. This work is held as a monumental piece of anti-war sentiment and has gathered great acclaim. It continues to be popularly read by the young and will be read until there are wars.

Slaughterhouse-Five Summary

Title Page and Epigraph

On the title page, the narrator describes himself in a few lines. He identifies himself as Kurt Vonnegut. He is of German-American descent. He lives in Cape Cod and is a chain smoker. He has remained a prisoner of war during WWII and has seen the war horrors with his own eyes. He relates the story in a schizophrenic manner and is narrating it from the planet of Tralfamadore. This short description comes to an end with an epigraph from a Christmas carol named ‘Away in a Manger.’

Chapter I

In this chapter, the narrator describes the background for the novel and tells how he ended up in Germany, fighting and was taken prisoner. It was WWII, and he being a POW, he witnessed the bombing of Dresden. Initially, he thought that describing the events at Dresden would be an easy thing to do. But when he sat and started  thinking about the way to write it, he came to know how hard it is. He made lists, drew character maps, and made outlines of the events that had taken place.

They are released in a prisoner exchange, and they return having their war souvenirs. They are kept in an open place where they are fed, and care is taken that they recover their health. After spending the required time there, they return to America to live their life the way they did before the war.

The narrator, after return, gets married and attends the University of Chicago. He works there as a reporter for a newspaper. He later shifts to New York and starts working at the public relations in a firm while his wife spends time socializing with war veterans and their families.  He is able to meet his friend Bernard V. O’Hare who remained his companion during the war.

He takes his daughter and her friend to Pennsylvania to meet him. He comes to know that O’Hare’s wife, Mary, is angry over his intention of writing a novel. She thinks that this will glorify war, and to keep the engine of the war alive, their children will have to be the fuel. He tells her that it won’t be so, and he will name it The Children’s Crusade, which is an idea in opposition to the one she thinks.

He and O’Hare board a plane for Dresden and go to see the places where they have been during the war. He apologizes to his publisher because he has fallen short of his expectations. He had given him a contract to write a three-book contract which has failed to fulfill.

Chapter II

In 1922, Billy Pilgrim was born in Ilium, New York. He is a brilliant student and attends optometry school. There is an abrupt break in his studies when he is drafted and sent to war. At his return from the war, he suffers a nervous collapse. He recovers, starts his optometry practice, and gets married. The plane crashes near Sugarbush, Vermont, he is on board, but he survives. After that, he starts talking gibberish and tells that he was detained there by aliens from Tralfamadore. His daughter is distressed when she finds him writing a letter to a local newspaper about aliens.

Tralfamadorians are strange creatures, of green color having a hand on their top and an eye in the middle of the hand. Tralfamadorians believe that time is a simultaneous phenomenon, and it doesn’t take place sequentially. This is what Billy thinks is the reason for his being stuck in the war memories. His father died when he was under training and came to join the funeral. He joined back the war in 1944 at Luxembourg and was never able to meet the person whom he was supposed to assist. 

He concludes behind the enemy lines with an 18 years old anti-tank gunner and two scouts. The latter two are careless regarding him, while the former named Roland Weary builds fantasies about saving him. Weary imagines himself and the two scouts as the three musketeers. Billy is apathetic regarding his being saved. Weary tries to frighten him by showing him the trench knife, which causes wounds that never recover.

He repeatedly shows Billy vulgar pictures of sexual intercourse. Weary is comparatively more facilitated than him because he is a regular soldier. Billy was sent as a chaplain and thus without  boots for combat or warm jackets. In the forest, he goes back and forth in time, suddenly moving to the time when he was a kid and was thrown to a pool by his father. He remembers his visit to his mother when she was in a nursing home. Then there is movement forward, and he is in the cocktail party when he cheated on his wife. 

He then recollects of the time when he was in Germany, fighting for America. He and Weary were moving with other scouts, and they abandoned  them. He is beaten by Weary, and then German soldiers and a dog appear.

Chapter III

Five Germans and a dog capture them. Two of them are old toothless men; two of them are teenage boys, while an exhausted corporal is their leader. He has been wounded four times and sent to the front each time after recovery. Their dog is on loan from a farmer. Billy and Weary are captured while the rest of the scouts are found and shot by another group.

The corporal takes Bible, boots, and dirty photo from Weary. Boots are exchanged with one of the teenage soldiers while the picture is given to one of the oldies. They are marched for miles to a stone cottage where other American prisoners are kept. The next flash forward is to 1967 when he confused a patient with his long silence. Again he comes to the time when prisoners were made to stand in a row to pose for a picture. He then moves to 1967, remembering the time when he was invited for a speech to Lions’ Club. There, a man delivered a speech in support of the Vietnam war.

Next, he comes to his home, which he has bought after numerous savings and investments. There he lies on a vibrating bed. His mind then returns to Luxembourg, sees himself and Weary being marched to a transport depot in Germany. They are taken to the prisoner camp in train cattle-cars while the German officers have lavish cars to transport them. They meet a colonel there whose name is Wild Bob and is suffering from Pneumonia. He is in bad condition and about to die, but Germans don’t care about it.

The train doesn’t move for two days, and he dies there, his corpse is shifted from one car to another. They can see German officers going in and coming out of their car, having lavish dinners while they are given sausages. They are given food through the vents, then  use their helmets for defecation while the same vents are used to dump them. There is not enough space to sit comfortably or sleep, and they take turns for this purpose. A soldier says that he has seen worse conditions than this. He moves back to 1967.

Chapter IV

It is his daughter’s wedding night, and he is unable to sleep. He spends time sleeplessly because he knows that the spaceship is coming from Tralfamadore. He waits there and sees his daughter has moved out of her room. He receives a phone call from a drunkard; then, he moves out to the den. He watches a war movie. He is unstuck in time and watches movies  backward and forwards. Then the flying saucer comes, and he boards it. He then moves to the time in the war when he is being taken and unable to sleep. There is a soldier who kicks in sleep, and for this reason, he moves to a beam above the vent.

Roland Weary dies of gangrene in the foot on the train. He tells his mates there that the people to blame for his death are the three musketeers and Billy. Billy’s mate in the car also dies and tells him that this death is not that bad. They arrive at the prison camp on the tenth day. They emerge out of trains like some barbaric creatures. They are asked to take overcoats from a large pile, the one he receives is that of a civilian. It is too small for him, but he takes it because of the lack of any other option.

 They take a shower and are deloused. The majority of the soldiers are of weak physique except for Edgar Derby, who is an old soldier and was a history teacher before the war. They are mocked for their weak physiques by Germans. There is a small, pockmarked person named Paul Lazzaro, who was a car thief before the war; he vows to avenge Weary’s death. 

While he has a shower, he moves to his childhood time, taking a shower and then a golfing game on a sunny Sunday morning. He then moves to the spaceship and thinks that time is an earthling concept which can be superseded.

Chapter V

He is on the way to Tralfamadore, and he asks for a book to read. They have only one book in English, which is Valley of the Dolls. He then asks about Tralfamadorian novels; he is told that they are in the form of symbols which are to be read at a single instant. They have no plot but present a beautiful picture of life. It is a series of scenes that are beautiful and surprising.

Their spaceship enters into a time warp. He moves back to his childhood and remembers the time when he was with his family on vacation and had wet himself due to the fear that he would  fall into the canyon. It happens once again when they visit Carlsbad Caverns, and he is frightened due to the dark.

From there, he travels to German captivity, and he remembers the time when he was taken to a camp where British officers were held. They were welcomed by the British and received rations enough to fill their war struck stomachs. They are served a rich dinner. There is enough supply of chocolates, cigarettes, and cigars. He is then told that Germans tried to humiliate the soldiers in every possible way, and one of the officers was given a short overcoat.

He then recollects the time when he was at a mental hospital after the war. There he meets Billy Rosewater, and he introduces him to a novelist who is not much popular. There they discuss how young soldiers were brought to war. His mother visits him at the hospital and then Valencia. He and Valencia get married and have their first child.

He is in his basement, and the stove is not working, his daughter comes and reproaches him for his carelessness. He then terrifies his patient by sharing the view of Tralfamadorian time with him, and his mother complains to Barbara.

Chapter VI

He wakes in the hospital, and his sight is caught by the magnetism from the coat hanging on the wall. Looking at this sight for a few minutes, he dozes off. When he awakes, he finds himself at the camp and can see the Englishmen digging the ground to make toilets. He sees Paul Lazzaro, who is threatening an English man that he will kill him after the war is over. He tells how he killed a dog by feeding blades in the food. He tells him that he will kill Billy to avenge  Weary’s death.

He thinks about his death and tells that he doesn’t fear his death because his death isn’t written at Lazzaro’s hands. He will be killed after returning from Tralfamadore in 1976 and will relate all he has seen there. His mind then returns to war and can see his companions joining other compatriots in entertainment. They are then marched to train and taken to Dresden. 

The prisoners reach Dresden, and at their arrival, they are marched in the city. They are amazed to see the beauty of the city. There a surgeon mocks him for his loose coat. Then they are taken to a slaughterhouse and kept  in its fifth portion. They memorize its name which is Schlachthof-fünf, in case they lose their way. This name means Slaughterhouse-five. 

Chapter VII

Billy Pilgrim, his father-in-law, and some other optometrists board a plane for Montreal. Along with them, there is a quartet from a barbershop. They sing songs and spend time merrily. Billy is aware of the fact that the plane is about to crash. It happens at Sugarbush Mountain, and the plane hits it. At that time, he was thinking about 1944 when he was in Luxembourg, and Weary had beaten him. Austrian ski-instructors are there, and they rescue him. He is asked about his address in German, and he tells them about Slaughterhouse-Five. 

He is then taken down from the mountain and admitted to a hospital where his brain surgery is performed. There, lying unconscious, he goes back into the prisoners’ camp. He remembers time there with Derby, and there a distant cousin of his is a guard. His name is Werner Gluck, and both of them don’t know about this relationship. They mistakenly open the door to a shower room; this is for refugee girls. He, for the first time, sees a naked woman.

He remembers his work at a factory in Dresden. They work there to produce nutritional supplement from malt. They are told not to take a single sip from it, but they do it when nobody is noticing them. He once secretly brought a spoonful for Edgar Derby, who was in tears to see it.

Chapter VIII

Howard W. Campbell, an American turned Nazi, visits them and tells them of the benefits of joining the Nazis. He tells them that they will have food, shelter, and other luxuries if they fight against Russia for Germany. This infuriates Derby, and he speaks ill of the Nazi evils. He reproaches Campbell for desertion of his homeland, and praising tells about his own country. Then there are sirens heard of planes that are to come to bomb the city. They rush to hide in the basement. The following night jets come and bomb the city.

He is taken by sleep in the slaughterhouse basement, and when he awakes, he finds himself in his home basement. He gets out of the basement to find his daughter. On the way, he finds Kilgore Trout, who is editor of the local newspaper.  He helps Trout deliver the paper because one of his delivery boys has left him. He then invites him to his marriage anniversary.

They come to the party. Trout tells him of the only letter of praise that he has ever received. He is amazed because it is not from a fourteen-year-old but from a Captain in the army. He then engages in talks with a beautiful dumb woman. Billy has an anxiety attack when he listens to the barbershop quartet and leaves for the washroom where he meets his son.

From there, he comes to think of the quartet reminding of the guards in the slaughterhouse. They reminded him of the night when the city was attacked, and when they came outside to see the city, there was nothing left but rubble. He had told this story in Tralfamadore to a pregnant woman when she asked him about it. He had told her that Dresden then looked like the moon’s surface.

He then remembers how they got out of there and stayed at an inn where they were fed by the kindhearted owner.

Chapter IX

When Valencia comes to know about Billy’s plane crash, she leaves for the hospital and has a car accident. Her car is hit by a Mercedes in the rear, and the exhaust system is affected. She is taken out of the car, but she dies in hospital due to Carbon monoxide consumption. When Billy is told the news, he remains unaffected because his mind is not working properly. His other mate in the hospital thinks that he is delirious.

He is working on the use of nuclear weapons in Japan, and for this purpose is reading books. He is an older man in his seventies. When Billy tells him about his stay at Dresden and being  a soldier back in the second world war, he is taken for a crazy man. His name is Bertram Rumfoord. He then goes back to the time in the war when they traveled back to the slaughterhouse from the hospital to see it. They travel in a wagon and collect food items from the empty houses. The rest of the persons go inside while he prefers to stay outside.

He then returns from the hospital and visits a bookstore. There he finds Trout’s novels in pornography section. He is out to tell the world about the Tralfamadorians and the concept that there is no free-will. He also comes to know about Wildhack, who has disappeared. He doesn’t talk about Tralfamadore on TV; instead, he chooses radio. When he tells about it, he is expelled from the studio. He then time travels to Tralfamadore and sees Wildhack nursing her child.

Chapter X

The narrator comments about Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy’s assassinations in this chapter. He then describes his experience of the visit with O’Hare to Dresden after the war. He also tells of the ongoing Vietnam war.

He then goes back to the time of the second world war. They worked there with other prisoners to collect the dead bodies. Edgar Derby was shot for stealing while they returned after the war ended.

Slaughterhouse-Five Characters Analysis

Billy Pilgrim

Billy is an optometrist and a war veteran. He is traumatized by war and, for this reason, presents his experiences as a fantasy. He is much different from anti-war heroes. He is a weak person before and after the war. In his childhood, he fears swimming because he thinks he will drown. He becomes a soldier and is mocked for his weak physique. He is enlisted as a chaplain but sent to war as proper soldiers. He is not given proper kit but is in the war at Bulge and gets arrested.

He is an incongruent soldier, and this creates a farcical effect. He is a scrawny, mild-mannered person, which adds to the absurdity of his being soldier. His appearance and dress underscore irony. He is a weak person but yet comes out of war unharmed. In contrast to him are other soldiers who are fit and healthy but lose their lives. He is shocked and physically exhausted by the events that take place around him. He initially describes himself unstuck in time  but then moves to and fro between the events. He moves from past, present, and future simultaneously.

Billy’s life is filled with indignity faced at different instants of life, and for this reason, he comes to believe the Tralfamadorian belief about death. He tries to normalize the gravity of deaths by saying, ‘so it goes.’ He tells about the death of his mate on  the train and says, ‘so it goes.’ In the same manner, he tells about the carnage of innocent people at Dresden and says the same. And the same phrase is used about his own death, which was predicted years ago. He is killed by an assassin and says, ‘so it goes.’

Roland Weary

Roland is Billy Pilgrim’s fellow soldier and is a violent person. He abuses him and is captured with him by Germans. He saves Billy’s life several times, and the reason behind it is not his philanthropy but rather his belief that he is a war hero. He thinks that his role in fighting the war for America is undeniable, and for this, he deserves medals and praise. He comes to think of the other two scouts as two close friends and believes that should be called the three musketeers.

The scouts don’t feel comfortable with this sort of delirious person, so they leave him and Billy. His dreams are shattered at this incident, and he sincerely believes that Billy is responsible for it. He is clearly in contrast to Billy, who stays silent and wants to die while he glorifies himself and thinks of himself as deserving medals.

He thinks that he has saved Billy’s life in war, and he finally becomes the reason behind Billy’s death. He tells Paul Lazzaro that Billy should be killed to avenge his death, and that happens years later. This proves him a murderous, self-indulgent, self-idolizing idiot and a coward. He becomes a murderer at the time of his death instead of becoming a war hero.

Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt is the novel’s author and, in the novel, plays a minor role. He is probably the narrator of the novel. In the opening, he describes his difficulty in organizing his thoughts and failure at doing what was expected. He was much affected by the war events and, for that reason, refers to the novel’s story as that of Billy Pilgrim. He is largely absent from the novel and appears rarely.  His presence as the author is confirmed by the refrain, ‘so it goes.’ His comments as the author confirm the interpretation of the idea that fantastical events are the result of a disturbed mind.

Bernard V. O’Hare

He is the closest friend of the narrator during the war. He is seen when Vonnegut visits him to get help for his Dresden book. He, like his wife, Mary, is a non-fictional character in the novel and has a significant role behind making the idea a reality.

Mary O’Hare

She is Bernard’s wife and opposes the idea of the novel because of the fear that such novels glorify war. She is later convinced by Kurt that this book would be dedicated to the condemnation of war. After that, she agrees with the idea.

Gerhard Müller 

He is the non-fictional taxi driver who drove Kurt and Bernard to Dresden. He later sent a Christmas card to Kurt, and this simple gesture made him part of this novel. He is a sympathetic and kind character amid the violence in the novel.

Wild Bob

He is an army-colonel and has lost his mind. He works at the railyard. He asks everybody  if he belongs to his regiment and the fact is it that all his men have been killed in the war. He invites them to visit Wyoming. He dies arbitrarily, and this shows the poignance and pointlessness of such gestures during the time of war.

Paul Lazzaro

Lazzaro is a hooligan and a thug who kills Billy. He has taken part in the war and is a pervert. He is a revenge loving person and was a car thief before the war. Though Billy knows that he will be his murderer, he accepts it because he believes in the Tralfamadorian concept of time.

Edgar Derby

Edgar Derby is an American soldier and previously a history teacher who has volunteered for war. He is a strongly built person and survives the hardships until the bombings. After the bombings like the rest of the soldiers, he is sent to collect dead bodies from the rubble. He is seen stealing a teapot, and for this crime, he is shot. The narrator doesn’t express any pathos about his death and takes it inevitable.

Valencia Merble

Valencia is Billy’s wife. She is a pleasant, loving, and a bit fat woman. They have two children and live in a well-furnished house.  Billy distances himself from the family because war trauma has affected his life.

Tralfamadorians

Tralfamadorians are aliens from the planet of Tralfamadore. They are like toilet plungers and exhibit Billy in their zoo. They have a strange perception of time and think that it is a simultaneous phenomenon, not sequential. They take life for being non-linear, and this idea is used by the narrator in the narration of the novel. Their perception of time has made the narrator accept death.

Eliot Rosewater

He is a veteran like Billy and suffers from trauma. He finds escape in Kilgore Trout’s novel and tells Billy to read this writer.

Kilgore Trout

He is a science-fiction writer. He is a bitter person because he thinks his works are not appreciated. He appears in many works of Vonnegut and seems his alter ego.

Werner Gluck

He is a young German soldier and is a guard at the slaughterhouse. He sees a glimpse of naked women with Billy, and both of them share this pleasant experience with each other. It shows that the fundamental feelings of human beings are the same. It is also an indication of the insignificance of the political ideologies.

Howard W. Campbell, Jr.

He is an American Nazi, who has accepted Nazism in Germany and recruits people for war. He roams in the slaughterhouses and tries to convince prisoners to fight against Russia. He shows an evil face of war.

Montana Wildhack

She is an attractive young actress. She is kidnapped by the Tralfamadorians and kept in the zoo as Billy’s mate. She fathers Billy’s child and lives in Tralfamadore.

Barbara Pilgrim

She is Billy’s daughter. She is married at the age of twenty-one. She bears the death of her mother and traumatic attacks on her father. She represents the young generation who suffer due to the second world war.

Robert Pilgrim

He is Billy’s son and a delinquent person. He joins American forces and fights in Vietnam. His father is unable to communicate with him due to his behavior. He is reformed later and reconciled to his father.  

Bertram Rumfoord

He is a non-fictional character included in this novel. He was an official historian and was admitted to a mental hospital with Billy. He didn’t believe that he had been at war, and this shows the official behavior of bureaucrats to glorify the war. These writers don’t believe how soldiers react to war and how their opinion is contrary to that of soldiers.

Billy’s Mother

She is an idealist person who wants to mold the lives of her children, ideally. When she comes to meet Billy at the hospital, he tries to hide because he thinks he would be an ingrate in her opinion.

Themes in Slaughterhouse-Five

War

Second world war is probably the most justified war, which, according to its proponents, was fought on moralistic grounds. But still, it was a war, and human beings exceeded their limits, revenging and doing atrocious acts that can’t be easily forgiven. The author clearly opposes the idea of war and conveys this through the narrator. He has been the witness of the inhuman bombing at Dresden, and he speaks of it at his speech at Lions Club and captivity at Tralfamadore.

He tells the world of the fire’s rain that incinerated innocent people who didn’t participate in the war but were still burnt alive. He tells of the horrors that find their origin in the war like trauma, suicides, mental instability, loss of dear ones, and many other things. This is a treatise against the glorification of and asserts the unacceptability of war. War is destructive, but it has some materialistic benefits as well. Humanity is butchered to reach this end.

There are also traces of science fiction which show the escape from a war-torn world to a place where people live peacefully. This ideal place is shown as Tralfamadore, whose residents are aware of the horrors of war and, for this reason, don’t fight. It is the war that kills the individuality of a person, and human beings don’t regard feelings. Instead, they pursue material gains at the cost of human lives.

Suffering

Suffering is a major theme that is discussed in this novel.  We can see from the start till the end that innocents suffer in life, examples of it are Jesus Christ, the horses in the Dresden with bleeding hooves and the innocents killed in the war. It shows that life is always unfair to innocent people.

Billy is an inexperienced and simpleton person who is sent to war to see the brute realities. He sees life in the most fierce form and sees people die like flies. He sees innocents turn into indifferent soldiers killing regardless of age, gender, or nationality. This suffering makes him mentally ill, and he isn’t able to lead a life like normal people. He tries to find an escape out of this suffering. He finds it in an imaginary world, which is Tralfamadore. This is a respite from the agonizing reality of an evil world where all that matters is material gains and the innocent suffers.

Death

War and death are two inseparable friends. War brings with it deaths, and the same happened in the second world war. Alone in Dresden, the death toll, according to the narrator, is 130,000. Death is inevitable, but war makes it horrible because there is none to console you when you are hit in war. You lie on the ground helplessly and bear the pain, but there is none who can tell you that all this will get fine. This helplessness is another accessory that adds to the suffering.

The narrator has seen death so many times that he is irreverent towards it. He has lost all the emotional feelings regarding it; he considers it merely a phenomenon that happens. He describes it as, ‘so it goes.’ This shows how frequent deaths in war are and how it makes it acceptable. He finds comfort from death in the form of the imaginary idea that his death has already happened, and life is a set of fragments that occur whose moments happen in fragments.

The narrator accepts the reality of death and creates an imaginary world of his own in the form of Tralfamadore to justify it as an experience. He believes that death is an experience, and the people who died are alive and live somewhere happily.

Materialism

There are two basic essences which make life, viz. matter and soul. We focus more on the materialistic factor and almost neglect the spiritual factor. This case is more evident in Western society, especially the US, where the ‘American Dream’ means more resources.

The same is the case with Billy, who after returning from war prospers. He has a lavish home, automobile, and a successful career as optometric. But his memories of war haunt him, and this is the most pathetic remembrance that he has felt. He has no solution that will help him have an escape. He finds it in his imaginary world. We can conclude that it is a call to action to fulfill the American Dream by reaching both material as well as spiritual ends.

Time and Free Will

Life is absurd, and our free will is an illusion that ensnares us the most. Time and birth are the greatest conspiracies against free will, and these can’t be superseded. These are the fetters that mock us at every turn of life. Time tells us that we won’t ever be able to beat it, and the same happens in this novel when the narrator is haunted by the ideas of wartime. He fears the return of the time when he again will be a prisoner of war and see the bad days. The idea of free will is mocked by the shape of the Tralfamadorians whose single look shows the unmatched absurdity.

Billy’s life is another example that is mocked by the idea of free will. Things that he never wanted in his life happen to him continually. Through this, all the author has tried to convey the message that there is no such thing as free will, and time is the greatest hurdle in it. His life is also a denial of the fact that the fittest survive. There were people far better than him and deserved survival, but they couldn’t.

Morality and Ethics

There is a clear suggestion of the author’s disbelief in morality and ethics. This novel, with the simultaneous perception of time, indicates the narrator’s belief in predestination accompanied by nihilism. He sees the inhuman incidents during the second world war and, after that, makes him believe that morality and ethics are of no use. He, like Nietzsche, believes in a world that is beyond good and evil. There is no artificial difference between good and evil. Like the Tralfamadorian novels, this narrative is morality free where there is just a story, nothing else.

The author wants the reader to think about the reasons for war, and this is clearly shown. He shows it through the characters of Rumfoord and Paul Lazzaro, who are warmongers. These are self-righteous people and the reason behind the war.

Foolishness and Folly

It is the folly of the public that they think gloriously of war and those who fight in the war “gloriously.” There is no glory in war; war is all misery. This folly is called patriotism, and people feel proud of being called fools (patriots). This is the message that the author wants to convey. It is an anti-war book, and there are no war heroes.

The protagonist is mocked for his physique, appearance, and psyche. So if anybody thinks that he is a war hero, then he/she is wrong. The same is the case with Weary and Paul Lazzaro, who are violent fanatics, nothing else. These people are later presented as war-heroes, so the novel is an attempt to disclose the reality of war heroes. This foolishness is not an individual problem; rather, there is something wrong with the system and needs to be reconsidered.

Freedom and Confinement

This book not only encapsulates war experiences as a prisoner but also life experiences as a prisoner. The characters are prisoners everywhere, and there is always a feeling of being confined. The fetters are family, career, religion, society, and many other things. There are many things that need to be changed to make life comfortable.  If these changes are made, there would be no wars, no enmities, and no crimes. These changes are hard to make, but once made, the world will change. So to make the world change, we need to minimize the confinements and make people freer of the fetters.

Slaughterhouse-Five Literary Analysis

Slaughterhouse-Five is a postmodern novel that covers a range of topics ranging from war, psychological problems, familial relations, escape from problems, discontent with the prevalent narrative, etc. It is the story of a war veteran, which allegorically refers to the failure of the American Dream. He, through Billy’s story, tells the story of thousands of veterans whose life was ruined in the war that was not America’s. It is an anti-war effort that describes the horrors of war through the imagery of war-fronts and the portrayal of war-prisoners. In short, it is a masterpiece that, in a short narrative, covers a range of topics and convinces the reader to believe that war is misery, not glory.

Genre

It is a postmodern work, and the genre is hard to specify because it contains autobiographical elements, that of science fiction, war drama as well. So to simply place it in a specific category would be a postmodern novel. The autobiographical experiences of the author are presented in the guise of the narrator Billy who presents his war experiences. It is a defiance of prevalent narratives and tries to change them.

Tone

The tone of the novel is elusive, deadpan, and spare. There is a lot of action, but the narrator doesn’t show his emotions, so it is hard to guess what the narrator wants to convey. Even if the emotions of the characters are shown, they aren’t much expressive. An example of it is Billy, who is shown crying silently. So it is unemotional and persuading through logic.

Point of View

The narrator is a character in the novel. He is a first-person narrator and is seen popping-up frequently through Billy’s travels. He can be called a peripheral narrator because he tells about Billy and his life but shares almost nothing about himself and stays on the sideline. There is a lot told about the emotions and feelings of Billy, like an omniscient narrator. This creates doubt about whether Billy is acting like both the narrator and the character.

Setting

The spatial setting of the novel is from WWII  to 1976. While the temporal setting of the novel is Dresden, Germany, and Ilium, New York. It moves rhythmically between Germany and America as his memories flash back and forth. The setting signifies the novel’s war nuances and its impacts on the generations that were born or lived during that era.

Significance of the Title

The main title suggests the meaning of war as a slaughter. While the subtitle also suggests an anti-war sentiment. Slaughterhouse-Five is the name borrowed from the name of the POW camp where Kurt and his other mate prisoners were kept. The significance of carrying anti-war, science fiction connotations is autobiographical as well because it tells of the author’s own experience.

Significance of the Ending

The novel has no clear ending or opening, as suggested by Billy’s perception of time. He, like Tralfamadorians, thinks that time is a simultaneous phenomenon and does the same in the novel. He narrates the events in an unorderly manner; events change from one to another without any logical transition. This shows the absurdity of life and things happening around in the world. The narrator believes that if everything is happening in an absurd manner, why not the narration of the story. So there is no end, and this signifies probably the narrator’s existentialist beliefs.

Symbols

Different symbols like horses, stars, prayer, locket, mustard gas, and colors like ivory and blue are used as symbols. Horses signify soldiers like Billy, who can’t resist or act against the orders which they are given and obey them. Stars show the arrangement of the things as shown in Tralfamadore, but they mean the arrangement of the story and events told by people other than the writer. They relate the fact that all these are parts of a single narrative, whoever is the narrator.

Prayer represents the desire for acceptance of whatever is there in life regardless of its good or bad, and the meaning is further reinforced by the words of a prayer written on Montana Wildhack’s locket as well as on the wall in Billy’s office. Mustard gas is the smell of the corpses and other pungent smells that the narrator dislikes. He uses this imagery to describe his loathing for the objects he doesn’t like. ‘Ivory and blue’ is used when he is walking New York, and this tells of freezing or death.

Writing Style

Its language is dry and stark like November weather. All we can see is bleakness, absurdity, and sadness. It signifies the wartime realness. The novel is not adjective rich while the sentences are short and declarative. It is littered with dialogue and action. It tells of the problems and makes the reader feel all that is happening through its language. It is filled with grim and blunt realities, and for this reason, it can be called stark and dry.

Allusions

There are numerous allusions to historical facts. Some of them are lines from Horace, references to Goethe, city of Dresden, New York, Vietnam War, second world war. Other references are the Red Badge of Courage, The Three Musketeers, One thousand and One Arabian Nights, etc.