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Slaughterhouse-Five
OR
The Children’s Crusade
By Kurt Vonnegut
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Class Notes
Download the novel for FREE here: https://antilogicalism.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/slaughterhouse-five.pdf
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Chapter 1
The Second Title: The Children’s Crusade. To deconstruct the meaning of this title it is essential to define the word ‘crusade’;
“To lead or take part in an organized campaign concerning a religious, social, or political issue.”
Synonyms include; to fight, to do battle, to take up arms, to agitate, etc.
Once the words in the title are individually understood, one must next attempt to understand them in relation to the greater context of the story being told.
The meaning starts to come together when the author is conversing with Bernard O’Hare’s wife, Mary. Vonnegut is disappointed to discover that Mary becomes hostile to his presence when she learns that he intends to write a book about World War 2. When he confronts her about this she explains her feelings as follows;
“You’ll pretend you were men instead of babies, and you’ll be played in the movies by…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).
And then Vonnegut understands that war made her angry because, “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 vows to Mary and to the reader as well, that this novel will not lie about or misrepresent war. Part of telling the truth about war entails de-mythologizing it; wars are often fought by children who are scared, lost and confused—children who needlessly die in droves. By calling this novel The Children’s Crusade Vonnegut wants to engrain in the minds of his readers the connection between children and war.
Chapter 2
Billy Pilgrim is the principal character of this novel. To begin to gain insight into the novel and the character one must deconstruct his name. ‘Pilgrim’ is defined as; A person who journeys to a sacred place for a religious reason. Thus, as a reader you must determine what Billy’s religious or philosophical journey is.
“Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time,” (23).The author means to convey that Billy is no longer part of Linear Time.
Linear Time: only moves forward, is only experienced once in logical sequence (beginning, middle, end), and is equally new and unknown to those experiencing it.
Becoming ‘unstuck in time’ means that Billy for the entire novel experiences time in a Non Linear way. For Billy life is a collection of random moments, he “has no control over where he is going next…He is in a constant state of stage fright, he says, because he never knows what part of his life he is going to have to act in next,” (23).
Billy seems to be suffering from what can only be described as a curse. Everyone around him is experiencing a moment for the first time, Billy has lived through it before. Like an actor in a play, he knows what each person will say, and how every situation will end.
Billy is described from the outset in unmistakably non heroic terms. It appears that Vonnegut has an agenda to prevent anyone from viewing Pilgrim as a hero. He is described as intelligent but socially awkward and outcast. Around age 20 he has a mental collapse (24), and later experiences massive head trauma when he is the lone survivor of a plane crash (25).
At this point the readers must begin to answer a question for themselves, and each may have a different answer;
Is Billy Pilgrim telling the truth or is most of the story the product of a mental illness and/or brain damage?
Your answer to the above question will impact your understandings and perceptions of this novel. But either way, adopt a stance.
Billy, it is revealed, believes in no uncertain terms, that he was abducted by aliens. He reveals this publicly in a letter he writes to the Ilium News Leader where he describes the aliens as follows;
“…they were two feet high, and green, and shaped like plumber’s friends [plungers]. 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…they could see in four dimensions. They pitied earthlings for being able to see only three…” (26).
Here’s some pictures:
Billy’s most important lesson from the Tralfamadorians relates to life and death:
“The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist…It is just an illusion we have here on earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever,” (26-7).
Further, continuing to write on the Tralfamadorian notion of death he explains;
“When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition at that particular moment, but that same person is just fine in plenty of other moments,” (27).
This concept of death removes a major component of tragedy, sadness and fear from human existence. It is liberating in the sense that those who believe in this philosophy will not be encumbered by mourning the passing of loved ones, and so forth.
However, there is a troubling implication to this philosophy as well. If one believes that they are eternally alive, essentially being thrust from one moment to the next, there is also the possibility that all life will lose value and meaning for the believers. Why be concerned with any type of murder or death or suffering when a person is going to be happy in the next random moment? Why value your own life if you’re eternally trapped in a repeating cycle of life? It is plausible that this could result in highly troubling outcomes.
Billy’s daughter, Barbara, believes that he is senile due to several factors (28-29);
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The alien stories/ claims
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His disconnection from those around him
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His sudden indifference to his business interests
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His disregard for his home and hygiene
Billy Came unstuck in time in 1944 and it had nothing to do with the Tralfamadorians (30). During this time he is the lone survivor of a plane crash and soon after meets up with 3 other American soldiers. Together the group of 4 wander in enemy territory.
Billy Pilgrim is described by the author in a manner clearly aimed at destroying any notion that he might be a hero of any sort, Billy Pilgrim was “empty-handed, bleakly ready for death. Billy was a preposterous—six feet and three inches tall, with a chest and shoulders like a box of kitchen matches. He had no helmet, no overcoat, no weapon, and no boots. On his feet were cheap, low-cut civilian shoes which he had bought for his father’s funeral. Billy had lost a heel, which made him bob up-and-down…he didn’t look like a soldier at all. He looked like a filthy flamingo,” (32-33).
Billy is described in a manner aimed at destroying any soldier archetype that the reader might have. Billy is not brave, attractive or fearless—he is an inadequate joke who has managed to stay alive simply due to chance. Billy is also walking around in shoes meant for a funeral. It is no coincidence that he is surrounded by death and destruction as he wears these shoes.
Roland Weary, the 18 year old antitank gunner; he is another archetype of a certain type of soldier. Weary is a demented sociopath (definition: “a person with a personality disorder manifesting itself in extreme antisocial attitudes and behavior and a lack of conscience.”) who appears to enjoy everything that should be detestable about war. He is so eager and trigger-happy that he gets people killed (34-35). The origins of his character stem back to childhood at which point Vonnegut describes him as “unpopular because he was stupid and fat and mean, and smelled like bacon…He was always being ditched by people who did not want him…” (35). Growing up he had a “crazy, sexy, murderous” pattern of befriending people with the sole intent of ultimately beating them up (ibid).
Weary’s father seems to be mainly responsible for how he turned out as a person due to his fetish for collecting and gifting ancient torture devices (35-36). This is made evident when later on as a soldier Weary boasts of all the torture methods he’s aware of, in addition to the ones he innovated himself (36-37). Weary also has perverse sexual proclivities when it’s explained that his personal erotica depicts bestiality (40).
All of this to say, Roland Weary is the archetype of the Hollywood soldier brought to life. As such, he serves as a disturbing critique of what might happen if one is too well trained as a soldier, of what happens when one actually likes war, combat, and all the methods of engaging in it. Weary is a sociopath because he manifests all the signs of a person living according to his own values and rules, despite how that might negatively impact everyone else around him. Weary is the best argument for why it is essential that soldiers always have a conscience.
Billy and Roland are ditched by the 2 soldiers they were travelling with due to their inadequacy as soldiers (49). This abandonment shatters Weary’s war fantasy and he is left with the cold, ugly, unrelenting truth of war; he is not a hero, he is not part of a united group (The Three Musketeers), he is not the valued member of a team. Weary begins to attack Billy with the intent of murdering him for destroying his war fantasy (50-51).
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Chapter 3
The chapter opens with Billy on the ground staring into the shiny, golden boots of a German soldier. Staring into their shininess he can see Adam and Eve, “They were naked. They were so innocent, so vulnerable, so eager to behave decently. Billy Pilgrim loved them,” (53). There is contrast being used here by Vonnegut. Adam and Eve were in a golden, shining paradise, eager to please God, as Billy was immersed in a scenario that highlighted just how far humanity has fallen since its biblical beginnings.
Weary and Pilgrim are stripped of their possessions by German soldiers, which include a bulletproof bible, a pornographic photo, Weary’s cruel, savage personal weapons, and combat boots (54-55).
Upon arriving at a cabin, Weary and Pilgrim, now prisoners of war, settle in, and Pilgrim falls asleep, whereupon he begins to time travel (55-56).
Billy’s time travel has him arriving at his optometrist office, where he is also sleeping in the midst of seeing a patient and is suddenly in 1967(56).
Billy closes his eyes and is suddenly in World War 2 again and repeatedly bounces back and forth between then and 1967 (58).
Billy has the Serenity Prayer posted in his office:
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).
Billy and his fellow prisoners of war are loaded into boxcars (a train), one of the passengers is dead (68).
The Chapter closes with Billy falling asleep, a prisoner of war, on Christmas Eve, and time travelling back to the occasion of his alien abduction (71).
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Chapter 4
As he awaits the alien abduction that he knows will happen, for Billy has ‘come unstuck in time’, he watches a movie that is playing backwards on his television. Before we continue, I want to point out that Billy’s experience of time travel has him revisiting all of the moments in his life that he has previously experienced—rendering his life a perpetual state of déjà vu, you might say. (73-74)
As Billy watches the film, Vonnegut does something rather interesting. The backward playing film ironically depicts a display that is rather progressive. Rather than destroying people and things, we see these bombers operating in reverse reviving destroyed humans and objects. “When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was many women who did this work. […] The American fliers turned in their uniforms, became high school kids. And Hitler turned into a baby […]” (74-75).
Billy is abducted by aliens known as Tralfamadorians (75-76).
Upon boarding the UFO, the aliens begin to telepathically communicate with Billy. This means that they are speaking with their minds rather than their mouths (76).
The aliens as if Billy has any questions, the following interaction ensues;
“Why me?”
“That is a very Earthling question to ask, Mr. Pilgrim. Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because the moment simply is. Have you ever seen a bug trapped in amber?
“Yes.” […]
“Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why.” (76-77)
In this moment Vonnegut seems to be addressing a fundamental existential question about life itself; ‘why am I here?’ or ‘why me?’ are questions that humans continually ask as they search for meaning in this world or in their own lives. The answer with which we’re provided seems to suggest that the meaning of life is absurd or random, and perhaps there is no greater meaning to be found. However, perhaps this is the problem as well; if there is no purpose and no meaning to be found in this world, why should there be world wars? Why should life matter or have value?
Upon returning to the train car, Billy discovers that nobody will allow him to sleep anywhere near them because he kicks and whimpers (78-79).
Both Roland Weary and the hobo die on the ninth day of the train trip (79). Right before he died, Weary told everyone on his train car that Billy was responsible for his death (79-80).
On the tenth day of his train trip, Billy arrives at his destination, a prison camp, whereupon he is described as follows, “Billy Pilgrim was lying at an angle on the corner brace, self-crucified…” (80).
“[…] 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. Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all bugs in amber.”
“You sound to me as though you don’t believe in free will,” said Billy Pilgrim.
“If I hadn’t spent so much time studying Earthlings, […] I wouldn’t have any idea what is meant by ‘free will’ […]” (86).
In this exchange, the alien explains to Billy that no other planet in the known universe believes in free will. In other words, the alien is suggesting that it is an illusion.
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Chapter 5
At the prison camp Billy meets the English prisoners of war who were “adored by the Germans, who thought they were exactly what Englishmen ought to be. They made war look stylish and reasonable, and fun,” (94).
Due to a clerical error, the British soldiers had far more food and supplies than the needed at the prison camp. This allowed their experience of war to be enjoyable and lighthearted (94).
During the all-male performance of Cinderella mounted by the British POWs, Billy started laughing at a scene until it became an uncontrollable shriek that causes him to be carted off to the medical facility (98).
In 1948 Billy commits himself to an asylum, four years after the end of WW2. “Nobody else suspected that he was going crazy. Everybody else thought that he looked fine and was acting fine. Now he was in the hospital. The doctors agreed: He was going crazy,” (100).
Doctors attribute Billy’s mental illness to the fact that his father threw him into the deep end of the pool as a child when he was learning to swim (100). This demonstrates the total societal and medical establishment disconnect regarding the plight of soldiers who had survived wartime conflict. Young men would return home from war, and in the times that predated our understanding of PTSD, people would simple conclude that soldiers were suffering from ‘shell shock’. In reality, soldiers returned home from war as war machines who had committed and witnessed the unspeakable acts required of soldiers in times of war. They were offered no therapy, no reintegration into society, and far too little of the medical care required after surviving the unfathomable.
PTSD: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a mental health condition that's triggered by a terrifying event — either experiencing it or witnessing it. Symptoms may include flashbacks, nightmares and severe anxiety, as well as uncontrollable thoughts about the event. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/post-traumatic-stress-disorder/symptoms-causes/syc-20355967#:~:text=Post%2Dtraumatic%20stress%20disorder%20(PTSD)%20is%20a%20mental%20health,uncontrollable%20thoughts%20about%20the%20event.
During his time in the mental hospital, Billy meets a fellow patient named Eliot Rosewater. This will be significant for a variety of reasons, but especially because Rosewater will expose Billy to the writings of science fiction writer Kilgore Trout (100-101).
Rosewater and Billy were in a mental hospital because they “were dealing with similar crises in similar ways. They both had found life meaningless, partly because of what they had seen in war,” (101). Rosewater had accidentally killed a fire fighter, while “Billy had seen the greatest massacre in European history, which was the fire-bombing of Dresden. Both men “were trying to re-invent themselves and their universe,” (ibid).
Here’s how the History Channel explains the firebombing of Dresden:
On the evening of February 13, 1945, a series of Allied firebombing raids begins against the German city of Dresden, reducing the “Florence of the Elbe” to rubble and flames, and killing roughly 25,000 people. Despite the horrendous scale of destruction, it arguably accomplished little strategically, since the Germans were already on the verge of surrender.
Among the conclusions reached at the February 1945 Yalta Conference of the Allied powers was the resolution that the Allies would engage in concerted strategic bombing raids against German cities known for war-production and manufacturing, in an effort to bring the Nazi war machine to a crashing halt. The tragic irony of the raid on Dresden, a medieval city renowned for its rich artistic and architectural treasures, is that during the war it had never been a site of war-production or major industry. Both Allies and Germans alike have argued over the real purpose of the firebombing; the ostensible “official” rationale was that Dresden was a major communications center and bombing it would hamper the German ability to convey messages to its army, which was battling Soviet forces at the time. But the extent of the destruction was, for many, disproportionate to the stated strategic goal—many believe that the attack was simply an attempt to punish the Germans and weaken their morale.
More than 3,400 tons of explosives were dropped on the city by 800 American and British aircraft. The firestorm created by the two days of bombing set the city burning for many more days, littering the streets with charred corpses, including many children. Eight square miles of the city was ruined, and the total body count was between 22,700 and 25,000 dead, according to a report published by the city of Dresden in 2010. The hospitals that were left standing could not handle the numbers of injured and burned, and mass burials became necessary. (https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/firebombing-of-dresden)
Check out the before and after images of Dresden in order to have a visual sense of the devastation:
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Regardless of how you feel about the allied forces’ decision to firebomb Dresden, how does a soldier process or make sense of their role in the mass incineration of a civilian population? How does that impact one’s mental health or world view? Billy Pilgrim is a fictional representation of the novel’s author, Kurt Vonnegut, himself. Vonnegut participated in the firebombing of Dresden as an American soldier and wrote this novel to make sense of it all at a time when the world beyond Germany largely had no idea about what happened.
Rosewater was overheard telling a psychiatrist, “I think you guys are going to have to come up with a lot of wonderful new lies, or people just aren’t going to want to go on living,” (101).
Whenever Billy’s mom visits him in the mental hospital he hides himself under a blanket because, “She upset Billy simply by being his mother. She made him feel embarrassed and ungrateful and weak because she had gone to so much trouble to give him life, and to keep that life going, and Billy didn’t really like life at all,” (102).
“How nice—to feel nothing, and still get credit for being alive,” (105).
Edgar is surprised to discover that once the American POWs shaved, they were all just boys, prompting him to say, “It’s the Children’s Crusade,” (106).
The Children’s Crusade reference explained in-depth:
By the time Stephen of Cloyes and his followers reached Paris in 1212, they were exhausted, hungry and thirsty. But nothing could keep their leader from his bold mission. His entourage waited as Stephen demanded—and got—an audience from the King of France to ask for permission to conduct a crusade.
Stephen’s vision was grandiose: Along with his followers, he’d remove Muslims from Jerusalem and reclaim the Holy Land for Catholics. But there was something else striking about Stephen—he was just 12 years old.
His followers were children, too, lured from their families by Stephen’s sermons about a divine vision he’d had. And though King Philip turned down Stephen’s request, they were undaunted. Unarmed and unprepared, these kids were determined to strike out on a crusade of their own.
But the Children’s Crusade of 1212, as it is now known, has gone down in history as a misguided disaster. And though Stephen was a real historical figure, the truth behind the crusade is less clear. Did it really happen? And were most of its warriors really children?
Blame the ravages of time for those questions. The so-called Children’s Crusade is only briefly mentioned in chronicles of the Crusades, and since it was never officially declared by a pope, it technically shouldn’t be called a crusade. However, the movement’s unusual rise—and terrible fall—earned it a nickname that still sticks today.
Pope Urban II ordered the First Crusade in 1095, and the religious wars that followed depended on the approval of the Church. At various times, popes would call on European believers to head to the Holy Land and try to rout out Muslims, and these Catholic Church-sanctioned Crusades continued until the 1400s.
The Children’s Crusade was different. It didn’t have the approval of the Church, it arose independently, and its participants didn’t even have weapons. Rather, they bore crosses, banners and an optimistic assumption that once they got to the Holy Land, they could convert Muslims with persuasion and divine intervention.
Though chronicles give conflicting information, there seem to have been two main groups that participated in the Children’s Crusade. There was the flock led by Stephen of Cloyes in France as well as another band of aspiring crusaders in Germany, led by a charismatic boy known as Nicholas of Cologne. Both are said to have whipped up the passions of thousands of people.
In events that have been described as a form of mass hysteria, Stephen of Cloyes and others headed to Marseille, intent on crossing the Mediterranean and heading to the Holy Land. Legend has it he assembled 30,000 people for his cause, though some historians doubt the claim and say that many of the people were assembling for another crusade or simply went home once they heard Stephen preach. Some stayed, waiting for the sea to part like Stephen had foretold.
At around the same time, another group of believers gathered in what is now Germany. Nicholas of Cologne—about whom little is known—assembled his own group of followers with reports that an angel told him to start a crusade. Nicholas is said to have inspired tens of thousands of child and adult followers, whom he began leading over the Alps toward Jerusalem.
Not everyone was enthusiastic about these self-proclaimed crusades. Though the so-called “holy children” were motivated by religious fervor and often took the same vows as participants in papal crusades, they were seen as a threat by the Church. The boys’ ability to drum up frenetic support—and their sheer numbers of followers—terrified local clergy, who worried they were losing hold of their flock.
But though Nicholas and Stephen were labeled fanatics, their mystical mission to the Holy Land intrigued their followers. They held believers spellbound with sermons, songs and promises of miracles. Nicholas was so enthralling that he’s been called the inspiration for the legend of the Pied Piper of Hamelin.
The boys were good at whipping followers into a religious frenzy, but their simultaneous trips toward Jerusalem weren’t exactly well planned. As Nicholas and his flock headed over the chilly Alps, singing hymns and eagerly awaiting the conversion of the Muslims, they became exhausted and hungry. When they arrived in Genoa, Italy, they faced language barriers and annoyed townspeople who were not eager to play host to a ragged group of religious children. The people of Marseilles weren’t excited to see the crusaders, either.
Things disintegrated from there. It’s uncertain exactly what happened to all of the crusaders, but it seems that they dispersed once they got to the coastal towns. While waiting for ships to take them to Jerusalem, some took local jobs. Some returned to their towns. Others were sold into slavery or drowned at sea.
Some accounts say that a small group persisted and headed not to Jerusalem, but to Rome. But when they appeared before Pope Innocent III, he did not sanction their quest. He praised their enthusiasm, but told them they were too young to go on a crusade and told them to go home. It was a humiliating blow.
Though multiple accounts discuss Stephen and Nicholas, historians still disagree on many of the crusade’s particulars. In 1977, Peter Raedts reassessed the chronicles and concluded that participants in the Children’s Crusade had existed on the margins of society. They may have believed it was up to poor and marginalized people to take up the flag for Christianity after the first Crusades failed. Raedts concluded the crusaders were not really children, but poor people—an interpretation that calls the very name of the movement into question.
The slender accounts of the so-called Children’s Crusade make it hard to confirm or deny whether the participants were actual kids or just powerless peasants. But the ill-fated journey shows how the influence of just a few persuasive voices can incite a full-blown movement—even one that ends in humiliation and disaster. (From: https://www.history.com/news/the-disastrous-time-tens-of-thousands-of-children-tried-to-start-a-crusade)
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Billy’s wife, Valencia Merble, is a compulsive eater. Billy didn’t want to marry her, however a Vonnegut explains, “She was one of the symptoms of his disease. He knew he was going crazy when he heard himself proposing to her,” (107).
Here’s how one artist envisioned the zoo where Billy was part of the exhibit:
Billy was on display in the zoo for 6 months where he was watched regularly by thousands of Tralfamadorians as though he were a reality television program (111-112).
The Tralfamadorians explain how the end of the world occurs, “We blow it up, experimenting with new fuels for our flying saucers. A Tralfamadorian test pilot presses a starter button, and the whole Universe disappears,” (117). While Billy asks if the fate of the universe can be evaded, the Tralfamadorians that it happened, it always will be what happened, and nothing will ever change that.
Billy gains a companion in the Tralfamadorian human zoo, a well-known earth actress named Montana Wildhack (132-133).
Chapter 6
Paul Lazzaro is a spiteful person who believes revenge is “the sweetest thing there is,” (138). He delighted in making this point by sharing his anecdote of how he sought vengeance against a dog who once bit him (139).
Lazzaro promises Billy that at some point in the next 20 years he’ll have him killed to avenge the death of his friend, Roland Weary (141).
Lazzaro has Billy assassinated in 1976 during a trip to Chicago, but he is unbothered by this fact because he will be “dead for a little while—and then live again,” (143). Billy is not troubled by this because he shares the Tralfamadorian philosophy about life and time.
Billy Pilgrim becomes Cinderella, having put on the silver boots a British soldier had work in a production of said fairy tale.
Here’s a synopsis of Cinderella:
‘Cinderella’ is, of course, a classic fairy story, a ‘rags to riches’ tale about a kind-hearted girl who suffers various hardships only to marry the prince of the kingdom. Why is Cinderella called Cinderella? Since she is shunned by the rest of her family (especially the stepsisters), the poor girl sits among the ashes in the chimney corner – hence her cindery name. The ‘rags to riches’ transformation comes about when Cinders, who wishes to attend the royal ball, has her wish granted and subsequently meets the prince. Although she has to flee the ball and return home – losing one of her slippers in the process – the prince searches for and finds her, thanks to what is perhaps the most romantic shoe-fitting in all of literature.
https://interestingliterature.com/2015/04/a-summary-and-analysis-of-the-cinderella-fairy-tale/
Do you see any similarity or points of intersection between the Cinderella story and that of Billy Pilgrim? “Billy Pilgrim was Cinderella, and Cinderella was Billy Pilgrim,” (145).
From this point on, when you visualize Billy Pilgrim, be sure to imagine him “in his blue toga and silver shoes, with his hands in a muff,” looking “at least sixty years old,” (149-150). In other words, he’s an absurd spectacle that induces laughter in those who see him.
Billy and some of his fellow soldiers finally arrive at slaughterhouse number 5 (152).
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Chapter 7
When Billy boards the airplane destined for Montreal 25 years after the war, he knows it will crash, having experienced that moment on a multitude of occasions (154).
Why do humans find it offensive that Tralfamadorians see all life forms as machines? (154)
Billy has a fractured skull (156) in addition to the head trauma suffered in the plane crash of 1967. Could this account for his incredible theory about time, and his stories about aliens? Research the side effects of head trauma and explain.
“All the real soldiers are dead,” (159).
Chapter 8
Howard W. Campbell Jr. is an American Nazi in Germany recruiting fellow Americans to join the Nazis in the inevitable fight against Communism (162-164).
Billy since returning from war became friends with Kilgore Trout, a science fiction writer. Billy’s daughter blames Trout, at least in part, for why Billy is mentally unwell (in her opinion) (165-166).
Kilgore Trout wrote a book about a money tree, “It had twenty-dollar bills for leaves. Its flowers were government bonds. Its fruit was diamonds. It attracted human beings who killed each other around the roots and made very good fertilizer,” (167).
Chapter 9
Billy’s wife dies of carbon monoxide poisoning upon arriving at the Vermont hospital to visit Billy after his plane crash.
According to his hospital roommate, all Billy does in his sleep is, “quit and surrender and apologize and ask to be left alone,” (184).
Billy’s son, Robert, visits him in the Vermont hospital after the plane crash. Robert is no longer an alcoholic, out of control 16 year old. He has become an elite Green Beret soldier in the US military (189).
Discussing the firebombing of Dresden, Billy concurs that it had to be done (198).
Chapter 10
‘Poor old Edgar Derby’ is mentioned a final time as the novel comes to a close. He is mentioned time after time by Vonnegut. He was put to death for the crime of plundering—he was convicted of stealing a teapot. Why does Vonnegut mention Derby so often? What is the point he is trying to make? (Hint: it relates to both the absurd and the ironic)
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