vietnam war

wave of antiwar protests

1968

Martin Luther King Jr., an inspirational leader of

the civil rights movement, was killed
J. F. Kennedy, running on an antiwar platform,
was killed

The author and his time

K.V. had been a soldier in the last month of

WW2 Dresden saw the aftermath of the
firestorm
Chapter 1: difficulties he had trying to write
about it

Billy Pilgrim

war is absurd

Roland Weary

authority is to blame for atrocities

war-ravaged(verwstet) Europe
peacetime America
the planet Tralfamadore

modern life is meaningless

Paul Lazzaro

art vs. reality

Edgar Derby

prisoner of the meaningless contraptions

(Apparate) of modern life

revisited Dresden in 1967 (Chapter 1 and 10)

Themes/Motifs
Valencia Merble Pilgrim

free will vs. determinism

Barbara Pilgrim

Darwin vs. Jesus

Bertram Copeland Rumfoord

organized religion

Tralfamadorians read all at once

each setting corresponds to a different period in

Billy's life
POW

V.'s experience as a POW forms the basis of

B.P.'s Dresden story in Slaughterhouse Five

The characters

death

The Tralfamadorians
Montana Wildhack

The Setting

human beings must read the clumps of

paragraphs that make make up Slaughterhouse
Five one by one

Elliot Rosewater

in each of the novel's main settings Billy is

confined (begrenzt)

order provides the structure

Slaughterhouse Five
Kilgore Trout

exhibit in an alien zoo

Howard W. Campbell, Jr.
prisoner of time
Mary O'Hare
can not change past, present and future

you learn not only what Billy is doing and

thinking at any time but what other characters
are up to and what's on their minds

in chapter 1 and parts of chapter 10 the author

speaks to you directly in the first person about
the difficult time he had writing this book

Bernard O'Hare
Kurt Vonnegut

the rest of the book is Billy Pilgrim's story told by

a third-person narrator
third-person narrator and Billy represent the
author

chapter of introduction his own story of

writing his "famous book about Dresden"
chapter 2 through 10 tells Billy Pilgrims story
Billy's adventures are not related entirely in
chronological order
six month from December 1944 to May 1945
most important period in Billy's life
when Billy works it all out in his mind, he is free
and the author has finished his Dresden book

Point of view
1922: born in Ilium, NY

author reminds directly that, while he is telling

Billy's story, he was there too

1944: soldier, captured by Germans in the Battle

of the Bulge, spends Christmas on a POW train

Form and structure

events are based on the authors experience

1945(January): arrives in Dresden, is put to
work and housed in Slaughterhouse Five

flexible perspective allows V. to comment

frequently on the action, life and writing itself

1945(February): Dresden fire-bombed by the

Allies
1945(May): war ends in Europe and POWs are
released
chronological order
1948: Billy recovers from nervous breakdown,
marries Valencia Merble
1967: Barbara marries, Billy kidnapped the same
night and taken to Tralfamadore, exhibited in zoo
and mated with Montana Wildhack
1968: Billy survives plane crash in Vermont,
Valencia dies while Billy is recovering, Billy goes
to New York City to tell about the
Tralfamadorians
1976: Billy assassinated in Chicago after
speaking on flying saucers and time