Before you hit ‘print”, realize that this is 26 pages in this font. These are notes with page references for the novel. They are from a professor whose name I will cite as soon as I find it. Some may confuse you. Some may conflict with what I’ve said. So it goes.
GENERAL INFORMATION ON SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE (=Sh-5).
Subtitle: TheChildren'sCrusade, added to that, "A Duty-Dance with Death." Further identified as a work by a World War II POW who witnessed the firebombing of Dresden, "'The Florence of the Elbe,'" and as written "Somewhat in the telegraphic schizophrenic manner of tales of the planet Tralfamadore, where the flying saucers come from." (The title-page entry ends with the traditional greeting-farewell of "Peace.")
Setting: Germany, Luxembourg, the USA, and a zoo on Tralfamadore (a planet that may exist only in the mind of Billy Pilgrim).
Time: 1922-13 Feb. 1976, primarily (the birth and death of Billy Pilgrim), with allusions to various events from shortly after the beginning of the universe (Adam and Eve) to the destruction of the universe.
Tense: Usually past tense, but with occasional present. (Note changes in tense; where Time is important, tense changes should be important.)
PointofView: Complex. In the "frame" in the first and beginning of the last chapters, first-person-protagonist narration; in the story of Billy Pilgrim, mostly third-person, omniscient narration, "over the shoulder" of Billy—but with occasional references to "KV" (Vonnegut as character), when he was there, near Billy but never meeting Billy.
MajorCharacters (after Morsberger; + next to character's name indicates that that person's death is narrated in Sh-5):
"KV": Vonnegut as narrator and character
BernardV.O'Hare: World War II (WWII) buddy to Vonnegut and "KV"
MaryO'Hare: Wife to B.V.O. and enemy of the glorification of war
+BillyPilgrim (usually "Billy"): a man who became unstuck in time—or who simply became "unstuck"—in 1944, the antiheroic protagonist
+ValenciaMerble: rich, fat, unattractive woman Billy Pilgrim marries; the marriage guarantees Billy Pilgrim's comfort and, perhaps, proves his madness
BarbaraandRobertPilgrim: daughter and son to Billy Pilgrim and Valencia
MontanaWildhack: beautiful actress of Billy Pilgrim's (erotic) dreams, with whom Billy Pilgrim is mated on Tralfamadore (assuming Billy Pilgrim "really" is on Tralfamadore)
PaulLazzaro: POW with Billy Pilgrim and murderer of Billy Pilgrim
+RolandWeary: American weirdo who is captured with Billy Pilgrim
+EdgarDerby: decent American high school teacher who is executed for looting at Dresden
EliotRosewater: SF fan in bed next to Billy Pilgrim's in mental ward of veterans' hospital
KilgoreTrout: prolific and utterly unsuccessful writer of SF stories, who has good ideas—but who may give Billy Pilgrim a terrible idea
BertramCopelandRumfoord: Official Historian of U.S. Air Force
Tralfamadorians: Intelligent creatures from the planet Tralfamadore, who capture Billy Pilgrim and display him and M. Wildhack in their zoo—"really" or only in Billy Pilgrim's mind.
Plot: Mostly the life story of Billy Pilgrim, framed with "KV's" story.
Conflicts: (1) Billy's ironic, antiheroic "victory" in remaining metaphorically unborn, asleep, unconscious, dead—and as free as he can manage from responsibility and pain. (2) "KV's" (and Vonnegut's) successful struggle to bear witness to the horror of the fire-bombing of Dresden.
Theme: "War is hell and all its glory moonshine," to quote Gen. Sherman, is as good as I can come up with. We can add to that the theme of human responsibility. Even if we are machines, we can struggle to be human machines, looking back on the past and striving to at least do less harm in the present and future (after Wymer).
Moral: If Tom Wymer is correct, and I think he is, Vonnegut—not just "KV"—states his moral more or less directly:
I have told my sons that they are not under any circumstances to take part in massacres, and that the news of massacres of enemies is not to fill them with satisfaction or glee.
I have told them not to work for companies which make massacre machinery, and to express contempt for people who think we need machinery like that. (19; ch. 1)
If Vonnegut's advice seems obvious, consider the radical implications of every parent's giving such advice—and of every child's taking such advice.
TheologicalPoints: (1) Vonnegut is not a Christian or even a theist; he may use traditional religious images (etc.) in untraditional ways. (2) The Tralfamadorian view of time is Godlike; traditional theology holds that God's foreknowing what we (will) do does not determine what we (will) do.
HistoricalPoint: Sh-5 has the honor of being one of the novels most often removed from American libraries and in other ways censored. Consider why that might be so. Vonnegut has said that his politics are mostly what he learned in high school civics class, and, if his class was like mine, that assessment seems quite accurate. Still, be sure you figure out the several ways in which Sh-5 is a subversive book, starting with its dim view of massacres in even good causes and working down clear to Vonnegut's diction: he uses "dirty" words. Note very well (=N.M.B.) that conditioning people to follow linguistic norms is part of our general training in conformity and obedience and that one way to start deconditioning people is to get them to violate those norms. Note also that moralists sometimes and satirists often resort to very strong language and to "dirty" words as part of a strategy of shocking their audiences into the recognition of moral responsibility, which is sometimes opposed to conformity, obedience, manners, and even (mere) civility.
OrganizingQuestion (mostly for courses existential and/or absurdist): Is Billy Pilgrim a hero amidst the absurd? An anti-hero amidst the absurd? Is his "answer" to what to do in an absurd world to quit—to find himself a womb with a view of Tralfamadore, and with Montana Wildhack? Does he live by Tralfamadorian philosophy even before he learns of (or makes up) the planet Tralfamadore? Does Billy start out a victim of forces beyond his control and then become, in his passive little way, an agent for such forces? (See Wymer article, and his use of the work of Tony Tanner.)
BRUTEFORCECRITICISM (page references from the l971 Dell rpt.):
TitlePage: See above, and note well (=N.B.) how Vonnegut describes himself and his book.
Dedication: To a woman who would protect babies (both literal babies and young men) and to the cab driver KV and B. O'Hare met in Dresden.
Epigraph: Repeated ch. 9, p. 197. Consider how Billy Pilgrim is both like and unlike the Christ child; N.B. that the "Baby" awakes.
ChapterOne:
pp.1-2: The "I" introduces himself and his book (again).
"If the accident will": I'm not sure what this means, but it is antithetical to the determinist philosophy of the Tralfamadorians.
pp.2-3: Apparently the Dresden memory has been as useless to "Vonnegut" as the penis in the limerick has become for its "owner"; does the limerick have any significance beyond that? (Real question.) Note that the limerick does stress "fool," a word Vonnegut repeats often in Sh-5. If we're asked to play word association in Sh-5—and it is a very punny book—then the "fool/ tool" association may be significant: later we're told explicitly that Billy Pilgrim is well hung, and he may be both a fool and a tool ("poor dumb schmuck" and a kind of passive but dangerous prick).
What is the function of the "Yon Yonson" song? For sure, it introduces us to a work from folk culture that is not linear but circles around on itself, as Sh-5 does (in a sense) and as the Tralfamadorian view of things says the universe does (in a different sense).
p.3: If it makes no more sense to write an anti-war book than it makes to write "an anti-glacier book," why did Vonnegut write Sh-5—or is Sh-5 something other than an anti-war book?
p.4: Note the reference to "mustard gas and roses"; the phrase is repeated in other places in Sh-5.
pp.4-5: Is the climax of Sh-5 the execution of Edgar Derby? If it is, where does the climax of Sh-5 occur? (How many times do we hear about "the execution of poor old Edgar Derby"?)
p.6: N.M.B. the "So it goes" after the reference to the "dead people in the cellars of Dresden"; the phrase becomes a motif in Sh-5, and you should be sure you know its significance.
p.7: I think this page has the first use of "babies"; note that word and its cognates—babies are important in Sh-5.
p.8: KV says Vonnegut's father said that Vonnegut had never written a story with a villain in it. Is there a villain in Sh-5?
p.9: Note "And so on" and "Three Musketeers" (here, the candy bar); these phrases also recur in Sh-5.
p.11: Vonnegut gets in here a standard bit of folklore and antimilitarist propaganda: veterans who actually fought tend to be much less militaristic than those who are ignorant of war. Note also the secrecy of the Dresden raid; that becomes important later—in the real world as well as in Sh-5 (the "secret" bombings of Cambodia were something of a scandal during what's called "the Vietnam Era" and were significant for the following "Watergate" scandal,1972 f.]).
pp.14-16: The dedication cued you to pay close attention to the views of Mary O'Hare; do so—her ideas on books and movies and war and babies are important. The subtitle to Sh-5 cued you to pay careful attention to a Children's Crusade; do so here and later. (The historical Children's Crusade was a vicious fraud; subsequent, figurative "crusades" may have been—and may continue to be—just as vicious and fraudulent.)
pp.17-18: The novel is moving toward the modern destruction of Dresden; KV puts that destruction into a historical context of destruction. Note also the juxtaposition of historical material with the idea of time and our ideas on past, present, and future.
p.19: Again, here we get the moral of Sh-5, juxaposed to the assertion that "... there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre." Only the birds speak after a massacre, and they only have an unintelligible question, "Poo-tee-weet?" Still, some of us might learn to say No when asked "to take part in massacres" or produce "massacre machinery." That might be something.
pp.20-21: KV presents himself as trapped in time and a sort of slave to clocks and calendars; note this for later—in different ways we may all be stuck or unstuck in time.
I'm not sure what to make of the excerpt from Theodore Roethke, but it's quite suggestive: Billy Pilgrim may never really wake up, so in a sense he, too, wakes "tosleep" and is as slow as possible in waking; Billy Pilgrim's Tralfamadorian philosophy has him utterly fated, and he does not fear his fate—so long as it is fated and there's nothing he can do about it; Billy Pilgrim may learn nothing, which makes him quite different from someone who at least learns by going where he must. N.B. the idea that "Thetruthisdeath" and that "No art is possible without a dance with death"—see title page of Sh-5. Note also the idea of an obsession with time.
pp.21-22: Lot's wife looks back upon the destruction of the wicked cities of the plain, and KV loves her for it and identifies with her looking back. Sh-5 is Vonnegut's looking back upon the destruction of Dresden, a wicked city (because its people went along with Nazism)—and looking back is a human thing to do. Can the Tralfamadorians look back? Does Billy Pilgrim do much remembering?
ChapterTwo:
p.23: Vonnegut is completely ambiguous on how "real" Billy Pilgrim's time-travelling might be: "Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time. * * * He says." For our purposes, we might as well assume that Billy Pilgrim's time-travel is as real as any of the other fictional material in Sh-5, but keep in mind that that assumption is merely an assumption; time-travel is real for Billy Pilgrim, but Billy Pilgrim may be just "a senile widower" who is eminently unreliable.
pp.23-27: A linear summary of Billy Pilgrim's life. Refer back to it if you get confused later.
p.27: The central explanation for "So it goes": it's "what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people." KV's usage is more general than even that. (Note also "And so on.")
pp.28-29: Note the "blue and ivory" of Billy Pilgrim's feet; the colors are another motif in Sh-5. Note also what Billy Pilgrim thinks and believes his mission is; KV—and Vonnegut—may disagree.
p.30: N.M.B. that Billy Pilgrim "first came unstuck in time" (if he did), "long before his trip to Tralfamadore"; he started his time-tripping when he was most miserable and most wanted to give up (see pp. 43 f.). The Tralfamadorians "were simply able to give him [Billy Pilgrim] insight into what was really going on"—or, they are Billy Pilgrim's mechanism for focusing his delusions, or they exist and are wrong about the nature of the universe, or they exist and are right about the nature of the Tralfamadorian universe but poor guides for the human universe. (All of the above? None?)
pp.33-34: Introduction to Roland Weary. (Note brief discussion of "mother-f*cker"; it may be as much of an explanation as Vonnegut will give us for his own use of "dirty" words. Having "motherf*cker" yelled at him—Billy Pilgrim—"woke him up" [temporarily?].)
p.34: N.M.B. that "Billy wanted to quit" and "could scarcely distinguish between sleep and wakefulness"—possibly Billy Pilgrim's general condition.
p.39: Weary, Billy Pilgrim, and the two scouts are likened to "big, unlucky mammals," which, of course, "they were." If you see nonhuman animals as essentially machines, then this sentence may suggest that you should also see humans as machines (a Tralfamadorian view that Vonnegut takes seriously, but with very different conclusion from those of the Tralfamadorians).
pp.40-41: Note the pornographic picture; aside from its intrinsic appeal to our purient interests, the picture shows up later and is introduced very shortly before Billy Pilgrim's first time trip. Also, Billy Pilgrim winds up in the zoo on Tralfamadore with a woman who knows a bit about pornography herself. (And the picture raises the question of "What is art?" The photographer who shot the picture may've died sooner than otherwise because he came up with an unacceptable answer to that question.)
pp.42-43: "Weary's version of the true war story," which is false, is juxtaposed to what's happening to him "In real life," which is then juxtaposed to another Weary version of his "Three Musketeers" story—which is the lead-in to Billy Pilgrim's first time trip. (And all this, of course, is in a part of Sh-5 that is blatantly fictional, with only the indirect relation to Truth that is the duty of art.) If Weary here, is less than reliable, Billy Pilgrim may also not be reliable: he may have his own "version of the true ... story."
The immediate intro. to Billy Pilgrim's first time trip is, "He was like a poet in the Parthenon" (Lord Byron?). He looks this way because he's scared, exhausted, and probably on the verge of giving up again. He may be about to find some "wonderful new"—and somewhat poetic?—"lies" to keep on living (see ch. 5, p. 101). Note what death and pre-birth are like.
pp.43-44: The climax of Sh-5 is supposed to be the execution of Edgar Derby, and we soon learn of at least one other important execution. Billy Pilgrim's first swimming lesson "was like an execution." What is little Billy's response to being rescued from drowning? Does big Billy retain his early attitude (Note that going underwater can serve as an image of returning to the womb; so can dying.)
p.45: Billy becomes "so vocal about flying saucers and traveling in time" after he "had his head broken in an airplane crash."
N.M.B. why Pvt. Slovik was executed. (If we are to avoid participation in massacres, must we challenge directly "theauthorityofthegovernment"?)
p.50: Billy Pilgrim goes on to become a respectable, rich citizen and president of his local Lions Club. Insofar as we identify with Billy Pilgrim and wish him well, we should be happy that he survives the war and becomes a success. Insofar as we note Billy Pilgrim's profound failings, we may see him going from being "a victim of outrageous fortune" to being "one of outrageous fortune's cruelest"—or at least most subtle and effective—"agents as well" (quoting Vonnegut's earlier novel, TheSirensofTitan [1959]; see Wymer, following Tanner).
p.51: Billy Pilgrim rolls himself "into a ball" (fetal position?), and Weary moves to kick him in the spinal column, "the tube which had so many of Billy's important wires in it." Note this for Billy Pilgrim's attitude toward danger and for the possibility that at least our bodies are machines (an idea taught in some physiology courses at least until recently [I have a text you may come in and peruse]).
Billy Pilgrim and Weary are captured; at this point Billy Pilgrim is most obviously a "victim."
ChapterThree:
p.52: Note connection between war and sex; it'll recur. Note also the dog; dogs, especially barking dogs, also recur.
p.53: Note reference to Adam and Eve; there's another reference to them in ch. 4, p. 75. Aside from completing the full time scheme of Sh-5—more or less Creation to the End of the Universe—what is the function of the Adam and Eve references?
p.55: The German corporal gives Weary's boots "to the beautiful boy," which leads eventually to Weary's death. But Weary blames Billy Pilgrim for killing him; Lazzaro gives his word to revenge Weary, and ultimately Lazzaro kills Billy. Hence, Billy Pilgrim's death springs from this act of kindness by the corporal to the boy. Ignoring for a moment the possibility that Billy Pilgrim foreknows his death and does nothing to avoid it—might we see here a kind of determinism that can exist even if the Tralfamadorian view of the universe is false: a chain of cause and effect that requires only human stupidity and stubborness in seeking vengeance for real or imagined injuries?