Slaughterhouse Five
Billy Pilgrim is born in 1922 and grows up in Ilium, New York. A funny-looking, weak youth, he does well in high school, then he enrolls in night classes at the Ilium School of Optometry, and is soon drafted into the army. He serves as a chaplain's assistant, is sent into the Battle of the Bulge, and almost gets taken prisoner by the Germans. Just before being captured he first becomes unstuck in time. He sees the entirety of his life in one sweep. Billy is transported with other privates to the beautiful city of Dresden. There the prisoners are made to work for their keep. They are kept in a former slaughterhouse. Billy and his fellow POWs survive in an airtight meat locker. They emerge to find a moonscape of destruction. Several days’ later Russian forces capture the city and the war is over. Billy returns to Ilium and finishes optometry school. He gets engaged to the daughter of the founder of the school. His wealthy father-in-law sets him up in the optometry business. Billy and his wife raise two children and become wealthy.
One day in 1967, as he claims on a radio talk show and in a letter to the editor, Billy is kidnapped by two-foot high aliens whose body shape is reminiscent of an upside down toilet plunger. These are the Tralfamadorians. They take him to Tralfamadore where they mate him with the actress Montana Wildhack and keep both earthlings in a zoo. They also explain to him their perception of time, how all of it exists for them simultaneously in the fourth dimension. When someone dies he is simply dead at a particular time. Somewhere else and at a different time he is alive and well. Tralfamadorians prefer to look at the nice moments.
When he is returned to earth, Billy initially says nothing. However, after he suffers a head injury in a plane crash and after his wife dies on her way to see him in the hospital, Billy tells the world what he has learned. He goes on a radio talk show and writes a letter to the newspaper. His daughter is at her wit's end and doesn't know what to do with him. Billy makes a tape recording of his account of his death, which will occur in 1976 after Chicago has been hydrogen bombed by the Chinese. He knows exactly how it will happen: a man he knew in the war will hire someone to shoot him. Billy will experience the violet hum of death, then will skip back to some other point in his life. He's see...
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...ughterhouse-Five, it seems that both the narrator and Billy Pilgrim are represented as author. The point of view in this book is the author is looking at the events of his own life; past, present, and future and trying to make some sense out of them the same way that Billy is trying to order the events of his own life.
The author uses short, simple sentences that manage to say a lot in a few words. The author also uses imagery. He also puts in his book references to historical events. These references increase the understanding and appreciation of Billy's story by suggesting historical and literary parallels to the personal events in his life. The novel does not have smooth transitions from one event to the next.
A normal novel has smooth transition. Vonnegut wrote this book without any smooth transition. This novel is very complicated. The topics that are mention are hard to understand. The book was a bit difficult to follow. Slaughter House-Five's character's needs more depth. More description is necessary. There was too much jumping around in time in Billy’s life. I thought that this book was going to be better than it actually was.
I wouldn’t recommend this book to a person wh
Though he was able to escape war unharmed, Billy seems to be mentally unstable. In fact, his nightmares in the German boxcar at the prisoners of war (POW) camp indicate that he is experiencing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD): “And now there was an acrimonious madrigal, with parts sung in all quarters of the car. Nearly everybody, seemingly, had an atrocity story of something Billy Pilgrim had done to him in his sleep. Everybody told Billy Pilgrim to keep the hell away” (79). Billy’s PTSD is also previously hinted when he panics at the sound of sirens: “A siren went off, scared the hell out of him. He was expecting World War III at any time. The siren was simply announcing high noon” (57). The most prominent symptom of PTSD, however, is reliving disturbing past experiences which is done to an even more extreme extent with Billy as Slaughterhouse-Five’s chronology itself correlates with this symptom. Billy’s “abduction” and conformity to Tralfamadorian beliefs seem to be his method of managing his insecurity and PTSD. He uses the Tralfamadorian motto “so it goes” as a coping mechanism each time he relives a tragic event. As Billy struggles with the conflict of PTSD, the work’s chronological order is altered, he starts to believe
us about a character’s (Billy Pilgrim) life during World War two and how Billy coped with
Billy, an optometrist in Ilium, New York, finds himself "time tripping" with the people on Tralfamadore. To the Tralfamadorians time does not exist. Billy can be on Tralfamadore for years, while only being absent from earth for a microsecond (26). Billy's "time tripping" also allows Vonnegut to join the three main settings and experiences of the book: the horrors of the war and Dresden, Billy's normal life in Illim, and his time on Tralfamadore.
Billy Pilgrim time travels to various moments in his life at random, which suggests he has no power over his mind and the memories that haunt him. He “is spastic in time, (and) has no control over where he is going next” (Vonnegut 43), as he struggles to make sense of his past. Billy’s ability to remember events in an erratic sequence, mirrors the happenings of war. War is sudden, fast paced, and filled with unexpected twists and turns. Billy cannot forget what he experienced during his time as a soldier, and in turn his mind subconsciously imitates this hectic quality of war. This behavior proves that although the war is over, “psychologically, Billy has never fully left” (Vees-Gulani). For many soldiers, especially those who were prisoners of war (POW), it is inevitable that their mind will not be like it once was (Vees-Gulani).
Vonnegut's writing style throughout the novel is very flip, light, and sarcastic. The narrator's observations and the events occurring during the novel reflect a dark view of humanity which can only be mocked by humor. At the beginning of the novel the narrator is researching for a book he is writing. The book was to be about the day the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and the lives of the people who created the bomb. The narrator travels through the plot of the story, with characters flying in and out, in almost a daze. He is involved in events which are helplessly beyond his control, but which are inevitably leading to a destination at the end.
The story begins with Billy Pilgrim becoming "unstuck in time." Throughout the novel, Billy time travels to different times in his life. He's never sure where he'll go next, but he always returns to WWII, which is the main plot line. After Billy's life summary, which actually summarizes many of the events of the novel, the story jumps to when Billy first became "unstuck in time": 1944. Billy is a chaplain's assistant in the army during WWII, and is called oversees after the death of a chaplain's assistant in Europe. He is sent to his regiment during their involvement in the Battle of the Bulge; they do not win. Not being much of a military man, Billy Pilgrim wanders behind German lines until he meets three other American soldiers. After many near deaths, Billy is captured by the Germans and taken to a prisoner camp. While on his way to the camp Billy travels to 1967, the year he is abducted by a flying saucer from Tralfam...
In the novel Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, he talks about World War II and the bombing of Dresden. He writes about this historical event through the character Billy Pilgrim, Billy is drafted into the army at age twenty-one during World War II. He is captured and sent to Luxembourg and then later Dresden as a prisoner. Throughout the novel, Vonnegut constantly ridiculous Billy. He describes Billy as a character that has no individualism and no choice in anything that happens in his life.
Kurt Vonnegut is one of the favorite dark humorists of the past century. Combining humor and poignancy, he has become one of the most respected authors of his generation. For twenty years, Kurt Vonnegut worked on writing his most famous novel ever: Slaughter House Five. The novelist was called "A laughing prophet of doom" by the New York Times, and his novel "a cause for celebration" by the Chicago Sun-Times. However, Vonnegut himself thought it was a failure. He said that, just as Lot's wife turned into a pillar of salt when she looked back, so his book is nothing but a pillar of salt. Kurt Vonnegut tied in personal beliefs, characters, and settings from his life into the novel Slaughter House Five.
In Kurt Vonnegut's book Slaughterhouse Five, the protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, the remains of a man who has become a traumatized war struck soldier. In creating and developing Billy Pilgrim, the war, along with family influence, shapes how Billy acts in his two different lives: life in the military and life alone. Billy Pilgrim is surely on a mission, because his excessive time travelling doesn’t seem to happen for no reason. Billy circulates around his life, even through the moments of capital importance when he seems hopeless. He’s a mind boggling and confused man who tries to play the game of life the way society expects him to, but sometimes has the feeling that he was meant for greater things.
Billy Pilgrim is also not like Pilgrim who is the main character in the “The Pilgrim’s Progress”, although they have same last name. His experience is very horrible in the war, there are just have violence and cruel, like the soldier who is in the “Three musketeers”. Imaginary, a man who just naive and have a great lucky, how can he keep his life in the war, just lucky? It is funny. Thus, though the whole novel “Slaughter-Five” by Kurt Vonnegut, the main character, Billy Pilgrim is a contradictory person who has the naive and sane attitude together, in almost time he looks like a child, but his wise can “see” at his speaking and action, likes his speaking “So it goes.” (2) Not only is the indifference to the lives, or the hatred and
Billy Pilgrim has been through many cruelties in his life. As a child his own father was cruel to him. They had gone to the Y.M.C.A. to teach Billy how to swim. A horrible, traumatic, event that would stay with Billy for the rest of his life. “Little Billy was terrified, because his father had said Billy was going to learn to swim by the method of sink-or –swim. His father was going to throw Billy into the deep end, and Billy was going to damn well swim”(43). Roland Wear was a very cruel man as well. He even to it as far as to try and kill Billy by kicking him in the spine. The only reason he had to kick Billy in the spine was because some organization Roland had in his mind about he, and the other two scouts being the “Three Musketeers”. In Roland’s mind, Billy had broken them up, he had severed the connection between the greatest fighting force in the army. “Weary drew back his right boot aimed a kick at the spine, at the tube which had so many of Billy’s important wires in it. Weary was going to break that tube”(51). A horrible and saddening event that even the U.S. A. would hide for twenty-three years from the people of its own nation. The bombing of Dresden was the major cruelty for the simple reason that it killed so many innocent people with there being no military around. One of the most beautiful cities in the world to see devastated by war. “There were hundreds of corpse mines operating by and by. They didn’t even smell bad at first, were wax museums. But then the bodies rotted and liquefied, and the stink was like roses and mustard gas”(214). Such horrible tragedies how could Billy ever even come close to being able to cope with them all? Something must keep Billy sane.
Billy and Layla finally arrive to his house, in front of the house there’s a huge sign: “Go Buffalo” this is a clue on the environment Billie lived in at home. It is obvious his parents are huge football fans by the decoration of the house. Layla get in the character of being Billy’s wife, she makes up a story that Billy works for the CIA and that she really adores him. The next scene shows us three of the characters sitting around a table, and every minute it keeps switching. It seems like the camera is going through a point of view of one of the characters, and it keeps changing each time someone else speaks.
Billy learned his philosophy of death from the Tralfamadorians, the aliens who abducted him. They believed that time was virtually nonexistent, so when you die, they were only deceased at that moment and alive all the others. Billy has traveled in time all throughout his life, so he has seen a lot of death; The deaths of many American and Russian soldiers in the train and slaughterhouse, the death of his wife; dozens of others in a plane crash, and his own death. Everything that Billy saw was death, so he quickly became used to it to the point where it didn’t matter much to him. He awaited his death; at his speech he would say “hello, goodbye, hello, goodbye.” to tell his audience and “adoring fans” that he would never truly leave, that when he would be shot on the scene they should just let it occur, because they would always remember him, he would never truly leave. Whenever Billy saw death or spoke of it, he would just say “so it goes.” Billy used this phrase to help cope with the loss of someone and move on, unlike Tim who spent countless hours dreaming and crying over someone’s death. Billy also knew when a death would occur so it never came as a shock to him. Overall Billy became numb to all the death he saw each and everyday that he had no other choice but to accept it, and he was happier that
When he is in a green wagon that is filled with loot being pulled by two horses. The condition of the horse makes Billy cry. The horses are dying slowly of thirst and their hooves are battered and cracked. This is the only time Billy cries throughout the entire book. He doesn’t see this event in through his “Tralfamadorian eyes.” He feels sad, wishing he could do something about it, but he cannot, because it was meant to be that way, it always has, and always will. Billy, throughout time, has the mentality to try and educate the public about the ways of Tralfamadore. He writes to the newspapers to tell people that they are viewing the world all long, and how it is in four dimensions instead of three. “If I hadn’t spent so much time studying Earthlings,” said the Tralfamadorian, “I wouldn’t have any idea what was meant by
Billy is, in fact, more than 30 years old but he looks like a young adult whose social interaction skills are not acquired perfectly. He is known to have a mother whose influence is greater on him than anyone else. He gets so worried every time her name is mentioned. He stutters, especially when he is under pressure by others, and he is an internalizer, meaning that he does not express his emotions as much as he is supposed to be. Instead, he often prefers to escape from his problems or conditions rather than facing them. As a result of this type of internalization, he has suicidal patterns. For instance, when his mother gets angry at him about his marriage proposal to a young lady, he tries to cut his wrests and kill himself. Though, he fails at this attempt, he succeeds in another one towards the end of the