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.
