Simple Study Guide - Book Review

Main character analysis: Billy Pilgrim, a war veteran. Born in Illium, New York, 1922, Billy is described as feeble and passive, and he is drafted with only minimal training. The main attribute of Billy is that he is "unstuck in time," and has no control over where and when he "goes next" (23). Billy time travels throughout the novel, but his inability to control over where he travels to and what he sees directly coincide with the theme of soldiers' inabilities to deal with the tragic incidents that happen to them during battle.

Literature Format: Non-linear, the novel's concept of time is sporadic, paralleling Billy's life and his "time spastity."

Main Events: Since the book outlines Billy's birth, life, and death at the beginning of the novel, the reader witnesses Billy's life as if perhaps time traveling along with him.

• The beginning of the book describes details of Billy's experience in Europe during the Battle of the Bulge, jumping from present to the past, and outlining many of the people that he met during his "odyssey through time."
• Billy eventually returns after the war is over, marries, and has children. 
• However, he has a mental breakdown and is admitted to a veteran's hospital, no one believing his claims about being "unstuck in time." 
• Perhaps the climax of the novel comes from when he believes he is abducted by aliens from the mythical planet of Tralfamadore on the eve of his daughter's wedding. 
• Billy claims to be able to foresee his death, and at the end of the novel, he is shot by a gunman in 1976.

Tralfamadorians View of the World: The concept of time is explored throughout Slaughterhouse Five, and what is significant about the people of Tralfamadore is that they do not believe in free will, and that the concept of free will is an illusion that people on Earth have created. The Tralfamadorians exist in a fourth dimension, and they believe that time and the future does not change, and that everything is predestined or predetermined.

Central Message of the Novel: Slaughterhouse Five is most simply an antiwar book, and Vonnegut uses subtle humor and elements of science fiction to showcase the effects that war has on our society, highlighting World War II in general. For example, when a death is reported by the narrator, the phrase "So it goes" is always written after it, eventually de-emphasizing the significance of death in the novel. By using ironic tactics such as that one, Vonnegut criticizes the way society glorifies and commemorates war, even highlighting some of the absurd ways of thinking through science fiction (the Tralfamadorian aliens).

Apart from the obvious antiwar ideals that Vonnegut cleverly writes about, Vonnegut also explores the notion of time and memory, and how those two connect to one another. For Vonnegut, writing this novel helped him cope with the war, since he himself is a veteran, but he acknowledges the struggles that many veterans have with memory and their inability to control when those memories of the war can take over. Billy's character is meant to represent the "common man," his last name being "Pilgrim," and his simplistic character showcases how susceptible mankind is to the notion of war. Billy remembers events of his past through "time travel," and this clearly is meant to demonstrate how fractured one's lives are, even today. His sporadic view of time and the universe show the vulnerabilities that our culture has as a whole, and Vonnegut uses Billy to point out those ignorances.

Important Quotations Explained

1. In chapter 3, Billy considers "...a framed prayer on his office wall which expressed his method for keeping going." It reads:

"GOD GRANT ME

THE SERENITY TO ACCEPT

THE THINGS I CANNOT CHANGE

COURAGE

TO CHANGE THE THINGS I CAN,

AND WISDOM ALWAYS

TO TELL THE DIFFERENCE.

Among the things Billy Pilgrim could not change were the past, the present, and the future" (60).

Do you think this is good advice? What is the irony for Billy?

Quotation Explained: The irony for Billy is that he is struggling to deal with the Tralfamadorian belief that time moves cyclical, and things are constantly changing. However, in the world that Billy lives in, everyone believes in the linear movement of time and things would never be “changing.”  Humans would not have the ability to change the “things [they] can,” and it is ironic in Billy’s case because though he can witness the past, present, and future, he cannot do anything to change the predetermined events – he does not accept the things he cannot change; the irony for Billy parallels the irony for soldiers of war.


2. "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" (86).


Quotation Explained: This is the main view of the Tralfamadorians, explaining to Billy the illusion of free will on Earth and how they exist in the fourth dimension, believing that time is cyclical and constantly moving. The alien's inability to acknowledge free will suggests that perhaps humans do not actually have free will, and Vonnegut uses the irony and symbolism associated with time and the notion that humans are powerless to change the future. By pointing out how absurd the alien's view of the world is, Vonnegut is perhaps trying to emphasize that people DO have control over the world, especially in terms of war, and that people must question the authority, instead of blindly accepting their fate. Tralfamadorians, as described, literally have no eyes, so they represent the people that are "blind" and ignorantly accept what "simply is" instead of challenging the events that the Tralfamadorians believe to be predestined.

Tralfamadorian Image

This is a picture of a fictional Tralfamadorian alien

Described as:

"They were two feet high, and green, shaped like plumber's friends. Their suction cups were on the ground, and their shafts, which were extremely flexible, usually pointed to the sky. At the top of each shaft was a little hand with a green eye in its palm. The creatures were friendly, and they could see four dimensions. They pitied Earthlings for being able to only see three. They had many wonderful things to teach Earthlings about time" 

Questions & Answers

Billy is unstuck in time. What might Vonnegut be trying to suggest about Billy's "time spasity?"

Billy's time spasity shows his struggle to live in a world that has been destroyed by war, it seems. His inability to control where and when he is “unstuck” displays Billy’s understanding of the notion of death, and his shared belief with the Tralfamadorian’s that people are not considered “dead” after they die. His time spastity parallels with the structure of the book: Vonnegut tells Billy’s story at the beginning of the book, and none of it is linear. The book tells Billy’s story sporadically, and this could be perhaps to show the instability in his world. He uses this literary device to parallel the structure of the book, but also his manner due to the war – Billy cannot control his behavior, and he also cannot control when and where he time travels.

One of the most meanigful lierary devices in Slaughterhouse Five occurs at the beginning of chapter 4 when Billy watches a war film in reverse. What is Vonnegut after with this excerpt?

When Billy watches the war movie backwards he sees most of the actions as actions of peace and this is quite symbolic in itself. It shows the conception of time and its linear placement in the book; the events of the book parallel events of the world meaning that Vonnegut is trying to show the importance of the linear succession of events, and how if put in a different order, it can drastically change the outcome. Vonnegut tries to say that we should want to do things the way the movie portrays the actions of wars BACKWARDS – we should be doing the exact opposite of what we should be doing. For example, the movie shows women taking apart bombs and then military men burying them in the ground, displaying the irony of how the events can drastically change when seen in reverse order.

The title of this book is sometimes referred to as "The Children's Crusade." Explain the meaning of this alternate name.

In Chapter 2 of Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut visits his comrade from the war, Bernard O'Hare at his home, asking for help on his new novel which he wishes to write. When he enters the house, he immediately feels unwelcome by O'Hares wife, who later reveals that she is angry for Vonnegut for choosing to write a war memoir because she was afraid that he was going to glorify war, as movie and books often do. She states, "You'll pretend that 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 will look just wonderful, so we'll have a lot more of them. And they'll be fought by babies like the babies upstairs" (14). This alerts to Vonnegut that, "It was war that made her so angry. She didn't want her babies or anybody else's babies killed in wars. And she thought wars were partly encouraged by books and movies" (15). Vonnegut goes on to tell Mrs. O'Hare that he will call his book "The Children's Crusade," meaning that he does not wish to glorify or moralize war in any way. Vonnegut acknowledges that many of the men who go into war are not yet actually "men," and this encounter at the O'Hare's displays the negative impact World War II had on many people.

Questions & Answers (Continued)

Why does Vonnegut link the atrocities of war with humor and science fiction? What is he trying to accomplish?

Vonnegut uses Billy as the protagonist to narrate and tell his own story; Vonnegut IS Billy Pilgrim, and Billy's growing self awareness of the ignorance of humanity on the subject of war is crucial throughout the development of the story. Also, he satirizes the repression of emotions that most people experience who go through war, and this helps to bring to light the issues that our country has with war itself. This tactic of combining humor and science fiction with antiwar ideals is effective as a reader, mainly because of its subtle yet powerful war it awakens people to the issues that have been and are still going on int he world today. There is much irony in the humor used in the novel and perhaps the humor makes the subject matter stand out that much more.


In Chapter 9, how does Vonnegut use the character Rumfoord and his conversations with Billy to make his points about the Dresden Bombing?

Rumfoord’s character as a reporter represents the ignorance that people sometimes generally exhibit when it comes to details and circumstances about war. When Billy offers information about the Dresden bombing, Rumfoord does not want to hear it, perhaps because he simply does not want to know the real incidents of the event. This conversation that Billy has with Rumfoord shows the propaganda that is often involved in reporting the events of war, especially the war in Vietnam, because Americans did not know the status or the actual events of the war while it was going on. Rumfoord represents the typical reporter who would rather not know the gory details of the war mainly because it is his job to keep the world sheltered from that information. 


This further points out the ignorance of people when it comes to events of war, or even war itself, and Vonnegut means to criticize our culture through Rumfoord's character, displaying that many people do not care to even ask the "real" events of the wars that our country takes place in. People would rather live in blissful ignorance rather than face the truth, according to Vonnegut, which is that war is devastating and has a great destructiveness to it that many people overlook because our society has always tolerated the actions.

Final Exam

Who is the main character in Slaughterhouse Five?
A) John Doe
B) Billy Pilgrim
C) Roland Weary
D) Kurt Vonnegut

The novel focuses on the bombing of...
A) Hiroshima
B) Berlin
C) Dresden
D) China

Where is Billy's hometown?
A) Boston, Massachusetts
B) Illium, New York
C) New York, New York
D) Los Angeles, California

Billy believes he travels through time because he is...
A) Unstuck in time
B) An alien
C) A magician
D) He has a brain disorder

Watching the war movie in reverse is ironic because...
A) Once played backwards, the main message of the movie is about peace instead of hatred and war
B) It showed everyone turning into babies, highlighting the insignificance of our humanity in relation to the larger world
C) This war movie did not glorify the actions, as other war movies often do; it simply undermined them
D) All of the above

Billy believes he has been abducted by aliens from (hint look at next question):
A) Mars
B) Narnia
C) The Moon
D) Tralfamadore

The Tralfamadorians experience time...
A) Linearly
B) Backwards, then forwards
C) Simultaneously
D) Forwards, then backwards

Free will exists, according to the Tralfamadorians:
A) Only on Earth
B) On every planet
C) In a galaxy far, far away
D) Free will does not exist, it is a concept made up by Earthlings

What is Vonnegut's central message by the end of the novel?
A) Do not glorify war because it undercuts the dignity of mankind
B) A satirization of antiwar ideals, along with the ignorance towards death and massacre, along with issues of time and memory
C) The author means to address the cultural problems that are associated with World War II, and wishes to bring awareness to readers on these issues
D) All of the above

What does Billy's time traveling really represent?
A) Mental instability
B) Dreams
C) His way of reliving the past
D) Billy does not time travel in the novel