Slaughterhouse+Five

= **Title of Work** = __Slaughterhouse-Five__

= Author = Kurt Vonnegut

= Nationality/Ethnic Background = Kurt Vonnegut was American, with German-American Parents.

= Genre and Sub-genres = Satirical fiction, Dark comedy, Science fiction, War novel, **Metafiction**.

= Pertinent Biographical Information = Kurt Vonnegut was born November 11, 1922 in Indianapolis, and died on April 11, 2007, at the age of 84 from a head injury. Both of Vonnegut's parents were third generation German-Americans. After high school, Vonnegut attended Cornell University, majoring in chemistry but working as the Assistant Managing Editor and Associate Editor of The Cornell Daily Sun as well. While at Cornell, Vonnegut enlisted in the US army, who had him transfer schools to Carnegie Institute of Technology to begin a major in mechanical engineering.

Vonnegut fought in World War II as a private with the 423rd Infantry Regiment, 106th Infantry Division. He was captured by German troops during the Battle of the Bulge on December 19, 1944, and was a survivor of the bombing of Dresden on February 13-15, 1945. Vonnegut and other POW's survived the bombings in the meat lockers that were used by the Germans during the war as detention centers. Schlachthof Fünf, or Slaughterhouse-Five in English, was the name of the meat locker Vonnegut was held in. Vonnegut was later awarded the Purple Heart for having a case of frostbite during his time in Germany.

After the war, Vonnegut **went to the University of Chicago for anthropology and then** worked several jobs at newspaper and magazine firms as a reporter and writer, **like the City News Bureau of Chicago and Sports Illustrated.** **His first novel was //Cat's Cradel,// after he graduated the University of Chicago.**

= Literary Historical Period/Movement and Pertinent Background = The setting for this novel takes place during World War II in Dresden, Germany. = Major Characters, Their Relationships, Their Conflicts =
 * **Billy Pilgrim**- A disoriented and time-travelling American soldier captured during the Battle of the Bulge in World War II. Billy has a wife named Valencia, a daughter named Barbara and a son named Robert. Billy's main conflict through out the Novel is dealing with his time travel and people at the same time. Billy has trouble convincing others of his ability, or that there is an alien race he meets with regularly.
 * **Valencia Merble**- Billy's wife and mother of their daughter. She loves Billy, but Billy distances himself from her. She has a fancy for material possesions, something that Billy is never short on.
 * **Roland Weary**- Soldier who fights alongside Billy during the war. Weary is obsessed with fighting, gore, and glory. He is one of the few men that actually enjoys life in battle more then life in peace. Weary saves Billy's life several times during the war but ends up getting them captured through his loud antics, giving their position away. Weary dies during the train ride to the german imprisonment camps, blaming Billy for his death.
 * **Paul Lazzaro**- A strange car thief from Illinois that is also captured at the same time as Billy and Weary. Lazzaro swears to Weary that he will get revenge on Billy for him. Lazzaro never goes through with his plan though.
 * **Kilgore Trout**- A science fiction writer that is praised by Billy, even though Trout was not a successful writer in general during his career. Coincidentally, Billy runs into Trout on the street and invites him to his wedding anniversary celebration.
 * **Robert Pilgrim**- Billy's son who Billy never really gets to know well. During his teenage years, Robert goes down the wrong path as an adolescent rebel. He later cleans up his act though, and becomes a green beret sergeant.
 * **Barbara Pilgrim**- Billy's daughter who treats him like a child in is old age. Billy dislikes her because she doesnt respect him as she believes he is a senile old man. Barbara is described as a "bitchy flibberigibbet" because she had to take over as head of the household at age twenty.
 * **Montana Wildhack**- A beautiful model that Billy first sees in a pornographic magazine. Montana is also abducted by the tralfamadorians and put on display in the zoo on Tralfamadore with Billy. Billy and Montana mate and produce a child.
 * **Wild Bob**- A delirious army officer that Billy meets in the German prison. The man refers to himself as "Wild Bob". He has presumably gone insane due to the trauma of losing his entire regiment during battle.
 * **Tralfamadorians**- The alien race that Billy claims abducts him and takes him to put on display at a zoo on their home planet Tralfamadore. Billy often flashes back and forth between life on the alien planet and life during the war and on Earth.
 * **Eliot Rosewater**- A friend of Billy's who he meets in the veteran hospital. Rosewater also experienced horrifying sights during the war. Both Billy and Rosewater share a love for Trout's science fictional novels. They feel that Trout's books help them to deal with their trauma.
 * **Bertram Copeland Rumfoord**- A man who shares a room with Billy in the hospital and becomes interested in Billy's story about the war. At first, Rumfoord doesn't believe that Billy survived the Dresden bombings, but when Billy goes on with his story, Rumfoord learns to trust him.
 * **The Scouts**- Two infantry scouts who join forces with Billy and Roland Weary behind enemy lines. The Scouts later reveal that they think Billy and Weary are slowing them down so they abandon the pair. Billy and Weary later find the Scouts shot dead.

= Brief Plot Summary =


 * //Slaughterhouse Five// by Kurt Vonnegut tells the story of Billy Pilgrim, an American veteran from World War II. During his time in the war, Billy is captured by the Germans and is later released to work in Dresden, Germany. During his stay there, the city of Dresden is air raided by allies, but he and other Americans manage to survive the horrendous event. When the war ends, Billy returns to Ilium New York, where he becomes an Optometrists, gets married, and has two children. Though the war is over, Billy still suffers with past memories of the war that torment him. Later on, his daughter gets married. The night of her wedding, Billy is kidnapped by a flying saucer and taken to their alien planet, Tralfamadore. After a while, he returns home where he continues to work. On his way to an Optometry convention, the plane which Billy is on crashes. Luckily he survives, but suffers severe head injuries. After waking up from the accident, he begins to tell people about the Tralfamadorians and their planet. He makes his way the New York City to tell more people about it and about their beliefs which he looks up to. At an event at which Billy is speaking, he is killed by an assassin.**

= Motifs (Recurring Images, Ideas, Figures of Speech, Symbols, Colors) & Their Thematic Significance = = Other Significant Thematic Elements (Significant Character's Names, Significant Quotations, Significant Actions/Events) = "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to always tell the difference." - This saying appears several times in the novel as well as on Montana Wildhack's locket. "I am a Tralfamadorian, seeing all time as you might see a stretch of the Rocky Mountains. All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is." - This quotation summarizes the tralfamadorians beliefs about time.
 * "So it goes"- This phrase is used after every mention of death in the novel. It emphasizes the **inevitability** of death in a nonchalant tone. The phrase is used regardless of whether the death was natural, accidental, or intentional, giving every kind of death the same significance. A sort of acceptance is assumed by the reader that death is just a part of life that is unavoidable. **The phrase also shows that war causes death to have less of an impact on soldiers because they are so used to being around it.**
 * "Poo-tee-weet?"- Often after a scene of violence or destruction a bird will sing out in the silence saying "poo-tee-weet?" This symbolizes the lack of anything intelligent to say about war. There is nothing appropriate to say about death because there are no words that can describe the horrors of war. The birds question is left unanswered because nobody can explain why such an atrocity as the Dresden fire bombings could happen. **Also, the fact that even the birds are wanting an answer for the violence that has occured shows that the destruction and violence is crazy and unnecessary. Yet, there is no answer because those events are happening for stupid reasons.**
 * The narrator as a character- The narrator of the book frequently states that he, himself, was alongside Billy Pilgrim in the war as a fellow soldier and prisoner. For example, when describing a scene in which Billy witnessed another soldier vomiting in the bathroom the narrator states "That was I. That was me. That was the author of this book." The narrators first-hand experience with Billy Pilgrim gives him the credentials to tell his story.


 * "You were just babies in the war-- like the one upstairs! But you're not going to write it that way, are you.. you'll pretend you were men instead of babies, and you'll be played in the movies by Frank Sinatra and John Wayne or some of those other glamorous, war-loving, dirty old men. And war wil lok just wonderful so we';; ave a lot more of them. And they'll be fought by babies like the babies upstairs. "**


 * "On Tralfamadore, says Billy Pilgrim, there isn't much interest in Jesus Christ. The Earthling figure who is most engaging to the Tralfamadorian mind, he says, is Charles Darwin-- who taught that those who die are meant to die, that corpses are improvements."**

> - Dwayne Michael Carter, Jr.
 * "Girl I turn that thing into a rainforest. Rain on my head, call that brainstorming."

= Major Themes =
 * The destructiveness of war
 * Inability to control ones fate
 * **The way free will is seen as an apparition to humans**