Allusions In Slaughterhouse 5

A transport for expression and information, but conversely can convey the opposite. Kurt Vonnegut Jr. intended Slaughterhouse-Five to act as his semi-realistic commentary on his experiences in the Firebombing of Dresden; to blend fact and fiction seamlessly into a single publication. Though Vonnegut achieves this, he brings Slaughterhouse-Five to the point where the boundary between the two becomes fuzzy, and suffers a hit to his own credibility as a result, both in universe and in the real world. His allusions to events in the story, factual errors, and the conflicting rules of his own universe cast Vonnegut in a bad light.

Vonnegut provides allusions to other events within the book, as well as to other stories, removing the audience’s focus from the plot. During Vonnegut’s preface to the book in the first chapter, he mentions how he worked at the Chicago City News Bureau. On his first job, he mentions in passing that his reporter contact “was eating a Three Musketeers Candy Bar.” (Vonnegut 9) Designed for the audience to easily disregard, This small detail comes to the forefront when Roland Weary “[calls his group] ‘The Three Musketeers.’” (Vonnegut

42) This jarring connection forces the audience to reconsider the integrity of the events in relation to reality. Chapter Three contains an external allusion. A horribly ill ‘Wild Bob’ asks Billy—the protagonist—if “‘[he was] from the Four-fifty-first...Infantry regiment’” (Vonnegut 66). Vonnegut mentions that “[he] was there” (67), but a problem with this account exists—there is no records of the “famous” 451st Infantry. But the number happens to match Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, a story that fittingly describes the use of fire as a device to destroy the past. These suggest that Vonnegut is not telling a truthful story, though he does try to combat this by explicitly stating that “all this happened, more or less” (1) on the first line.
Factual errors and poor sources further degrade Vonnegut’s status. Vonnegut chose to utilize David Irving's The Destruction of Dresden as his source for casualty numbers, as well as a for an excerpt in chapter nine. David Irving posted 135,000 casualties, and Vonnegut parroted this number in the book. Vonnegut points out that he had little choice as little documentation on the event existed (Rumfoord, writing his book, states in the hospital that “from a official Air Force standpoint, it’ll all be new.” (191), but even when Irving’s credibility declined after the publishing of the book1, no effort materialized to correct the inflated number to the historically accurate 25,000. Other creative aspects, like the previously discussed Fahrenheit 451 allusion do not help either in inspiring faith in the authors work.
Vonnegut also contradicts the rules of his own universe on a regular basis.

Promptly after Valencia’s death, Rumfoord mentions “All [Billy] does in his sleep is quit and surrender and apologize and and ask to be left alone.” (Vonnegut 184) The author creates a reference to the second and third chapters where Billy, right after becoming unstuck in time, does each of these things in succession. The audience can presume that Billy is in some way “talking” in his sleep while in the hospital. A conflict arises though: if Billy experiences out-of-order time, then Billy can not be concurrently at two places at once. Moreover, no mention of Billy ‘traveling’ back to before they were captured. This suggests that the Universe may not have rules regarding Billy’s condition, and also provides another event to fault Vonnegut

on.
Intentionally designed as an absurd look at war, Slaughterhouse-Five forces Vonnegut to lose his credibility to the audience as a result. By alluding to other works, he lost factual accuracy and his audiences focus. Utilizing a single source further degrades Vonnegut's stature among the audience. Finally, Vonnegut’s ruleless world alienates them due to the human nature of assigning patterns. A well written story, Billy Pilgrim's epic might just be a bit too “far out”.