Slaughterhouse+Five

= Slaughterhouse-Five =

__War –__ this book isn´t about heroes who went to battle to save the world, but it talks about prisoners of war. People who do not want to fight and to kill people. And don´t have control of what they do and where they go. “There would always be war.” (pg.3) “I suppose that the idea of preventing war on earth is stupid, too” (pg.117) “On other days we have wars as horrible as any you’ve ever seen or read about...we ignore them” (pg.117) “How the inhabitants of a whole planet can live in peace! As you know, I am from a planet that has been engaged in senseless slaughter since the beginning of time.” (pg. 116)
 * __ Themes: __**

__Absurdity or Irony –__ The main character, Billy Pilgrim, is constantly called clownish and he looks very ridiculous. So this makes us think why someone so innocent is on the battle field and why did him survive. Also most of the deaths are very wired and ironic. “A whole city burned down...a soldier is arrested for taking a teapot. And then he’s shot.” (pg.5) Billy was on the battle field by accident with four other soldiers. He didn´t have a gun or a knife nor a helmet or a cap. When they were wandering around, somebody shot at the four from far away. “The third bullet was for filthy flamingo, which stopped dead center in the road when the lethal bee buzzed past his ear.” (pg.33) Valencia was going to see Billy Pilgrim at the hospital, when she got into a small car accident. Because she was worried about her husband, she didn’t care and just continued to head towards the hospital. When she arrived… “Valencia was unconscious, overcome by carbon monoxide. She was heavenly azure. One hour later, she was dead.” (pg. 183)

__Free-will -__ Billy Pilgrim after talking to the aliens, realizes that there is no such thing as free will. That we cannot change anything about time. And that only people from earth doesn´t know that. “Among the things Billy Pilgrim could not change were the past, the present, and the future.”(pg.60) “Why me?”... “Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is. There is no why.” (pg.76-77)

-Isabela grasso and Helena Riva

After the end of WW2, Billy Pilgrim married a woman called Valencia Merble. Billy pitied Valencia because she wasn’t considered a pretty woman, and that is one of the reasons Billy married her. Valencia loved Billy a lot, and they had two children. When Billy’s plane crashed in Austria, Valencia went there to visit him. On her way to the hospital, she crashed the car, and some carbon monoxide starting coming out. She died in front of the hospital where Billy was. During their honeymoon, they had a conversation, and Valencia mentioned, “‘I never thought anybody would marry me.’ And just after that, she says, “‘I’m going to lose weight for you.’” This shows how much Valencia liked Billy.
 * Valencia- **

At a point in the novel, we are introduced to creatures called Tralfamadorians, aliens who come from the planet Tralfamadore. These creatures are part of Billy’s post-war thoughts, and convey his dilution throughout the novel. Tralfamadorians are green and small, while shaped like toilet plungers, each one with a hand containing an eye in its palm. They have very able vision, being able to see in four dimensions. Intellectually, they can see the past and the future. Very optimistic, the Tralfamadorians believe that death is not the end, and is therefore, just a bad moment in life, as when one dies he is alive in other parts of his life. Also, when one dies, it is as if he was sick, and so, is living a bad moment which will eventually end. Tralfamadorians prefer to look at life’s better episodes; they see life positively and wonderfully. In the beginning of the book, Vonnegut tells the reader that he wanted to write a book about the WW2, but he took a long time to do so. He also tells a little bit about himself. The story is about a man who participated in World War II and who is a time traveler named Billy Pilgrim. Billy Pilgrim was called to participate in the war, as a chaplain’s assistant. His battalion lost a battle and he escaped with three man, Roland Weary and two scouts, they called themselves the three musketeers. While with the musketeers he had his first time-traveling experience. The scouts were killed and Billy was captured with Roland. While in the train to the prison, Roland died and told a man named Paul Lazzaro that it was Billy who had killed him, and Paul promised to have him killed. Billy was taken to the prison where Englishmen were imprisoned. There he was part of a play, where he had to dress like Cinderella. In this prison Billy time-traveled many times, but soon he had to leave to Dresden with all the other American prisoners. While in Dresden, the city was bombed. He and a high school teacher named Edgar Derby were the only survivors, however, Derby stole a teapot and so he was condemned and shot by a fire squad. This is the point where Vonnegut considerers to be the climax, because a man who survived a bombing died. After WW2 ended, Billy married a woman called Valencia and had two children with her. Valencia’s father was an optometrist, and he was the one who gave Billy the chance to work as an optometrist. In her daughter’s wedding Billy was captured by aliens, who called themselves Tralfamadorians. He was exposed in a zoo in their planet, Tralfamadore. After some weeks there, the Tralfamadorians brought a woman to Billy, Montana. Both were exposed naked in the zoo. Back in Earth, Billy was going to an Optometrist convention when his plane crashed in a mountain in Canada; he was the only survivor and was taken to a hospital near there. While in the hospital, his wife Valencia went to visit him, however, while she was in the car she had a car crash and some carbon monoxide came out. She died in front of the hospital where Billy was. After the plane crash and his wife’s death, Billy started talking about Tralfamadorians and his experience in Tralfamadore. The first time he did so was in New York in a radio convention. When he got home, in Ilium, NY, his daughter Barbara got angry at him and gave him a scolding sermon for telling everyone the “lie” about Tralfamadore. This happened for many years, and one day, when Billy was giving a speech to his “followers” he told them that he was going to die and so happened. The person who killed him was sent by Paul Lazzaro, the man who promised to kill Billy when Roland Weary died.
 * Tralfamadorians: **
 * Plot- **

Julia, Gustavo, Alan and Fernando

=Context= __ Slaughterhouse-Five __ is about one of the most horrific massacres in European history, the World War II firebombing of Dresden on February 13, 1945. More than 130,000 people died in Dresden, about the same number of deaths on the bombing raids on Tokyo together with the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Citizens of Dresden were incinerated or suffocated in a matter of hours as the fire sucked up and consumed oxygen. Kurt Vonnegut took about 20 years to write the book because he couldn’t think of a way to put the massacre he lived in words. The only reason he could publish the book was because of the way he wrote the book, by making Billy Pilgrim, the protagonist, “unstuck in time”. Vonnegut wrote __Slaughterhouse-Five__ as a response to war. “It is so short and jumbled and jangled,” he explains in Chapter 1, “because there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre.” Vonnegut published the book in 1969, while the US was in the middle of the Vietnam War. =**Setting:**=
 * Plot**
 * Billy Pilgrim is a war veteran. He participated in the World War II in the bombing in Dresden, Germany.
 * Billy is a time traveler. Throughout the novel he has episodes of different periods of his life. Including: his childhood, career, married life with Valencia Merble, time during war, as a father, his abduction of the tralfalmadorians, in the hospital, etc.
 * His daughter, Barbara, has a very different personality than him. She is conscious about time and concerned, while Billy jumps around in time. For him she is quite annoying. She may symbolize the future generation after the war.
 * The first chapter is Vonnegut telling the reader how it was difficult for him to portray this tragic event in his life in a novel.
 * This novel was dedicated to Mary O’Hare, who insisted that Billy’s book wouldn’t have a heroic point of view of the war.
 * Billy Pilgrim doesn’t believe in death. He follows the Tralfalmadorian’s beliefs which life is eternal; hence for him death is comforting.
 * Billy has a cowardly personality which is outlined in various scenes throughout the novel.
 * Structure**
 * The novel has a non-linear and non chronological structure.
 * The vocabulary used is informal.
 * Tone: The tone is ironic and familiar, where the narrator makes use of dark humor and absurdity which help portray the craziness of the story.
 * Major conflict: When Billy struggles to make sense out of a life forever marked by the experience of being in war.
 * It is written in first person and third person. Vonnegut, the author, narrates and includes himself in some events of the story.
 * The overall message of this book is to share the true life story of the soldiers that fought in war and the consequences it could have. For example, PSTD ( Post Traumatic Stress Disorder).
 * Vonnegut tries to emphasize how war traumatized people by making the main character jump around time, making it confusing for the readers.
 * Vonnegut includes aliens, the tralfalmadorians in the novel with the intention of creating an even greater confusion for the audience.
 * Billy Pilgrim’s time traveling adventure mirrors on the everyday journey people struggle to go through and search for meaning.
 * References:**
 * “ ‘I’ll you what,’ I said, ‘I’ll call it the Children’s Crusade.’ She was my friend after that.” (15)
 * Vonnegut indeed called his novel the Children’s Crusade because of Mary O’Hare, who was against young people fighting.
 * “ ‘Don’t lie to my father.” (29)
 * Billy’s father, like his daughter, represents real life, and aware of time, while Billy lives in a traumatic fantasy.
 * “This was when Billy first came unstuck in time. His attention began to swing grandly through the full arc of his life, passing to death, which was followed with light.” (43)
 * Billy time travel’s demonstrates his instabilities. Also, how he’s not prepared for life in general that is why he’s always time traveling to “escape” the moment.

The story takes place in four different places. Germany (mainly Dresden), United States (New York), the planet of Tralfamadore, and Luxembourg. The book happens during World War II in 1944-1945 but it skips around his entire life, from his early childhood in the 1920s to his death in 1976.


 * Dresden: **

Dresden is described as “Oz”. It had barely been affected by war, they would hear sirens everyday and they would hide, but it would never hit the citizens. Things there were basically normal, with theaters, restaurants, electricity, production of medicine, food-processing, and production of cigarettes. There were also women and children there, which the soldiers hadn´t seen in a really long time.


 * New York: **

Billy´s hometown was Illium, New York. In the future he works there as an optometrist, in an office at a mall. He also goes to a hospital because of his mental disorders in Lake Placid, New York.


 * Tralfamadore: **

A planet where Billy is abducted and then taken to, where the aliens put him in a “zoo”, where he lives in a cage with furniture and other human things to resemble a human dwelling.


 * Luxembourg: **

Billy and Roland Weary are captured there and taken to other American prisioners, and then they all go from there to Germany in a train.

Heloisa and Lydia

** Barbara: **
==== Barbara was Billy’s daughter who “was a fairly pretty girl, except she had legs like an Edwardian grand piano.”(29) She worried a lot about her father and was concerned about his stability. Her role in the novel was to emphasize the idea that Billy was acting crazy. One of the most significant quotes by Barbara was when she said to her father, “what are we going to do with you? Are you going to force us to put you where your mother is?”(29) This quote is significant because it explains how she worries enough to start threatening her father. ====

** Lazzaro **** : **
==== Lazzaro was a mean, tough, Russian guy. “Anybody ever asks you what the sweetest thing in life is...its revenge.”(139) He appears to be very cold-hearted because he is very violent to the point that he has a list in his head of who he wants to kill. His role in the novel is to show the kind of people that Billy dealt with in war time. “... just don’t cross me, that’s all.”(141) This is a memorable quote because it shows a lot about Lazzaro’s personality. ====

** Montana: **
==== Montana was a young, “nubile”, movie star who was captured by the Tralfamadorians and mated with Billy while being held captive in a zoo. Her role in the novel was to give the reader a sense that Billy was becoming delusional. She was a bit of a sarcastic person because when Billy talks about Kilgore Trout, she speaks in a sarcastic voice. “You’ve been time-traveling again. I can always tell.”(207) This is a memorable quote because it shows how unrealistic it is, for she doesn’t know anything about him. ====

__Memorable Quote:__ “ You shouldn´t even be in the Army” __Role in the Novel:__ Cruel soldier captured by Germans. Saves Billy´s life. Dies because of the loss of his winter close. He blames billy.
 * Roland Weary:**

__Memorable Quote:__ “He was being unfaithful to his wife Valencia for the first and only time” __Role in the Novel:__ Billy Pilgrim´s wife though Billy distances himself from his family.’ __Physical Appearance:__Fat wife. Unattractive wife She dies from carbon monoxide poisoning after an automobile accident en route to the hospital to see Billy after his airplane crash.
 * Valencia Merble:**


 * Wild Bob**:

__Memorable Quote:__ “If you´re ever in Cody´ Wyoming just ask for Wild Bob”

__Role in the Novel:__ American soldier Billy Pilgrim meets. He is mental. Billy does not have a major role. He is delirious and eventually dies of a fever.

Laura & Bianca

__HIS APPEARANCE__ When he was young, he was “tall and weak and shaped like a bottle of Cocal-Cola.”(23) “Then this damn college kid, who was so weak he shouldn’t even have been in the army, asked if he could come along. He didn’t even have a gun or a knife. He didn’t have a helmet or a cap. He couldn’t even walk right (…)” (42) During the WWII, “he didn’t look like a soldier at all. He looked like a filthy falmingo.”(33) When he was taken as a prisoner by German, he wore blue toga, silver boots from //Cinderella//, curtain on his hand. He was like a clown. __GENERALLY ABOUT BILLY__ He is a main character, protagonist of the book. And he is a time traveler. He came unstuck in time. He was born in 1922 in Ilium, New York. He had one daughter and son, who are called Barbara and Robert. His wife was Valencia. He was a soldier of WWII, and he was survivor of many events, such as bombing in Dresden, flight accident, etc. He survived alone from those events. He was in army with three musketeers, especially with Roland Weary. Later, Weary and Billy became prisoner by Germans. While he was transported, he met Wild Bob. He met Lazzaro and Derby and sent to Dresden. And he survived from bombing. He was sent to hospital, and he read books of Kilgore Trout. Later he married with his wife, and he had an accident in plane. When he was hospital, his wife died. Later, he was kidnapped by Tralfamadorian and had a baby with Montana. At there, he learned about attitude of Tralfamadorian to death and life. Later, he was killed by assassin’s bullet. __HIS PERSONALITY__ He is like an anti-war person. He cannot fight well like others, and he doesn’t look like soldiers at all. Also, when he was almost drawn in the pool, he just thought that “there was beautiful music went on.”(44) He doesn’t seem to have great fear of death. Actually when he was killed, he just said, “It is time for me to be dead.”(142-143) He is dull. He was saved by Roland Weary while he was doing nothing at war. Spooning syrup, being scolded by doctor about horses, reaction when Tralfamadorian kidnapped him, and other scenes display him like a dull and quite stupid person. Billy was a weak soldier, not only physically, but also mentally. He had a cowardly personality which made him easily give himself to dangerous situations many times in his life. For example, when Billy is still a small kid, his father submits him to a “sink or swim” situation, where he needs to learn to swim in order to be able to survive. Billy, without the option of rejecting the challenge, submits to the situation and lets himself drown instead of trying to swim (ends up being saved by a potential life guard on duty). After this incident, this aspect of Billy’s personality appears quite often, repeating itself while he was in war. In this particular scene, German soldiers are furiously shooting at Billy and three other American soldiers who were his companion for the past few days. When the bullets begin flying the small group immediately tries to protect themselves by hiding, but not Billy. Instead, he lingers in the middle of the street making himself an easy target, until his most present companion, Roland Weary, saves his life. __MEMORABLE OR SIGNIFICANT QUOTE:__ EDGAR DERBY PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS PERSONALITY - He had expected to become a captain company commander “because of his wisdom and age” (92) - What shows that he is a good person and cares and worries about others are the scenes in the book when he volunteers to watch over Billy when he was sent to the hospital and put to bed and tied down; and when he writes letters home in his head, “telling his wife he was alive and well, that she shouldn’t worry, that the war was nearly over, that he would soon be home” (143). One of the letters he wrote in his head said: “Dear Margaret – We are leaving for Dresden today. Don’t worry. It will never be bombed. It is an open city. There was an election at noon, and guess what? And so on” (147) - Englishmen nominated Derby a head American “praising him for his maturity and long experience in dealing with people” (146) - In his speech when he was elected, Derby said that it was his primary responsibility to make sure that everybody got home safely, which also helps to emphasize his characteristic of being a good person and a leader.
 * BILLY PILGRIM **
 * “No, no,” says Billy serenely. “It is time for you to go home to your wives and children, and it is time for me to be dead for a little while-and then live again.” (142-143)
 * “one of the best bodies belonged to the oldest American by far, a high school teacher from Indianapolis” (83)
 * Edgar Derby took good care of his body and coached the tennis team, that’s why he had one of the best bodies between the Americans
 * Edgar Derby was 44 years-old at the time of the war and had to pull political wires to get into army at that age. “He was so old he had a son who was a marine in the Pacific theater of war” (83)
 * The author refers to him as “poor old Edgar Derby” several times throughout the novel. Examples: pages 142, 143, 144, 147, 188.

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="TextRun SCX222365441" style="font-family: Tahoma,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">ROLE IN THE NOVEL
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="TextRun SCX222365441" style="font-family: Tahoma,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">The author of the book uses Edgar Derby’s death to emphasize his idea about death. Derby’s death is ironic because he survives the firebombing of Dresden and the war only to be executed for taking a tea pot from the catacombs. It is not the only “ironic death” in the book though.
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="TextRun SCX222365441" style="font-family: Tahoma,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Vonnegut also mentions that Derby’s death was the climax of this book.
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="TextRun SCX222365441" style="font-family: Tahoma,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">In my opinion it was the death that affected Billy the most, eve n though he does not show sorrow his death is mentioned several times in the book.
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="TextRun SCX222365441" style="font-family: Tahoma,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Edgar confronting Campbell on page 164 is probably the only confrontation in the book.

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="TextRun SCX222365441" style="font-family: Tahoma,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">MEMORABLE AND SIGINIFICAT QUOTES AND MOMENTS
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="TextRun SCX222365441" style="font-family: Tahoma,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Vonnegut describes the part which Derby stands up to <span class="TextRun SCX222365441" style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #000000; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Howard W. Campbell, Jr., the American Nazi propagandist, <span class="TextRun SCX222365441" style="font-family: Tahoma,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">as “what was probably the finest moment in his life”. The author also says that this confrontation was probably the only one in the book. At this moment, Cameron solicits them to join his Free American Corps to fight on the Russian front promising them food and repatriation after the war, he also says that they would have to fight communism sooner or later. With that, Derby stands up calls Cameron a snake and talks about the “American form of government, with freedom and justice and opportunities and fair play for all. He said there wasn’t a man there who wouldn’t gladly die for those ideals. He spoke of the brotherhood between the American and the Russian people, and how those two nations were going to crush the disease of the Nazism, which wanted to infect the whole world” (164).

-Roland Weary
 * __ Symbols and characters __**
 * Was an antitank gunner during the war.
 * Saved Billy’s life numerous times during war.
 * As Billy, Robert was a replacement in war, with only 18 years old.
 * He lived during most of his childhood in Pittsburgh.
 * Roland told and informed Billy about things such as tortures,stories, etc...
 * Had a triangular 10-inch blade knife
 * Made part of ‘’The Three Musketeers”
 * As we can see by these points, Roland Weary had an agressive attitude, he was as new and unexperienced in war as Billy, meaning a replacement, and he saved Billy’s life in numerous occations. He was then caputred by the Germans, and died of gangrene.

-Bernard V. O´ Hare -Mary O´Hare SYMBOLS __ Blue ____ and Ivory __ On various occasions in Slaughterhouse-Five, Billy’s bare feet are described as being blue and ivory. These cold, corpselike colors demonstrate the contrast between life and death, between worldly and otherworldly experience. __ The “Poo-tee-weet” Bird __ The bird symbolizes the lack of anything intelligent to say about war. Birdsong rings out alone in the silence after a massacre, and “Poo-tee-weet” seems the only thing to say, since no words can really describe the horror of the Dresden attack. The bird sings asking a question for which we have no answer, just as we have no answer for how such an atrocity as the firebombing could happen. __ Presence of Bernard O’Hare __ The presence of Bernard O’Hare symbolizes a kind of war friendship. Their encounter serves them as a way of therapy to overcome the fears of war. __ Tralfomodorians __ They symbolize a philosophy in which they look at life and death from another perspective. Billy gets influenced by this philosophy throughout the book. __ Adam and Eve in the corporal´s boots __ This, along with the 15 year-old boy, contrasts the horrors of war. This can be seen as innocence, youth, beauty, ignorance and childhoodness. . Andres Mendoza, Pedro Gouveia
 * Narrator’s war buddy
 * Helped the narrator to write and remember themes and memories of the war, including the Dresden firebombing.
 * O´Hare was captured along with the narrator during war
 * He is small in size
 * Worked as a district attorney in Pennsylvaina
 * The period of encounter between him and the author was in 1964
 * O´Hare symbolizes young friendship, which was lost in time.
 * Basically the importance of this character is to help the narrator in remembering the times during war.
 * Trained nurse
 * Bernard’s wife
 * She got upset because of the fact that the author and her husband were just babies in war and fears that the writing will in a sense glorify war.
 * She acts strangely when the narrator arrives to her house.
 * Mary, Bernard’s wife, is worried about the narrator’s book. She is afraid that because the two men went so young into war, they would glorify war and make a heroic book out of it.

Related Assignments
Practice Paper 1

Additional Reading

 * News Feed by Sarah Schmelling, from her book //[|Ophelia Joined the Group Maidens Who Don't Float]//<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">[[file:Slaughterhouse Five News Feed.ppt]]
 * <span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">Report from the United States Government Accountability Office: " VA and Defense Health Care: More Information Needed to Determine If VA Can Meet an Increase in Demand for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Services: GAO-04-1069."
 * Blog post on //Psychology Today//: [|"What Is a Healthy Response to War?"]
 * //TIME Magazine// article: [|"How One Army Town Copes with PTSD"]