Slaughterhouse-Five Summary
Description
Here you will find a Slaughterhouse-Five summary (Kurt Vonnegut's book).
We begin with a summary of the entire book, and then you can read each individual chapter's summary by visiting the links on the "Chapters" section.
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Last Updated: Monday 1 Jan, 2024
Chapters
Chapters Slaughterhouse-Five Summary Overview
Born in 1922, Billy Pilgrim leads a rather ordinary life in Ilium, New York, attending night school for optometry and eventually being drafted into World War II. After his father's tragic hunting accident, Billy is shipped overseas and thrust into the infamous Battle of the Bulge in Belgium, where he is captured by the Germans. Amidst the chaos, he has his first experience of time-shifting, seeing his entire life play out at once. He is then transported to a POW camp in Germany, and later to the city of Dresden, where he survives a horrific bombing by hiding in a meat locker of a former slaughterhouse. After the war, Billy returns to his hometown, completes his optometry studies, and marries Valencia Merble, a wealthy optometry school founder's daughter. Despite seemingly achieving the American dream of wealth and family, he struggles with war memories triggered by simple events in his life, like a barbershop quartet at his eighteenth wedding anniversary. Interestingly, Billy claims to have been abducted by aliens, known as Tralfamadorians, who took him to their home planet and introduced him to new concepts of time and life. Following his return to Earth, Billy keeps his alien experiences to himself until a plane crash in 1968 leaves him the sole survivor among his optometrist colleagues. After a brain operation and the accidental carbon monoxide poisoning death of his wife, Billy feels compelled to share his extraordinary experiences with the world. He goes on a radio talk show, writes letters, and even predicts his own death in 1976, alleging that he will be assassinated at the behest of a wartime acquaintance. Billy is unwavering in his belief, stating that he will merely experience the hum of death and then time-shift to another point in his life.
chapter 1
Vonnegut, funded by the Guggenheim Foundation, and his friend from the war, Bernhard V. O’Hare, revisit Dresden in 1967. During a taxi ride, they chat with the driver, Gerhard Müller, about life in communism. Vonnegut dedicates his book Slaughterhouse-Five to Müller and Mary, O’Hare’s wife. Müller sends a peace-filled Christmas card to O’Hare later on. Vonnegut struggles to write about Dresden for 23 years since his experience during the war. He creates a colorful outline of the story on wallpaper, with each character and event represented by different colors. Despite his efforts, capturing the enormity of the destruction proves elusive. It doesn't help that he is against war, reflecting on a comment that writing an anti-war book would be as useless as writing a book against the movement of glaciers. He recalls his life after the war, studying anthropology at the University of Chicago, working as a police reporter, and doing public relations for General Electric. He's surprised by the lack of knowledge about Dresden's devastation. Seeking info from U.S. Air Force, he finds the event is still classified. In 1964, Vonnegut, along with his daughter and her friend, visit O’Hare in Pennsylvania. He meets Mary, who expresses concern about the portrayal of the soldiers as heroes, claiming they were more like "babies". Vonnegut assures her he won't glorify war and decides to title his book The Children’s Crusade. He later learns more about the Children’s Crusade and Dresden's earlier bombing in 1760. While teaching in Iowa, Vonnegut gets a contract to write three books, with Slaughterhouse-Five being the first. He attributes its short and mixed up nature to the impossibility of intelligently discussing a massacre. En route to Dresden, Vonnegut spends a night in Boston where his sense of time gets distorted. Reading about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, he relates to Lot’s wife—punished for looking back at the burning cities. He views his book as an unavoidable failure and decides not to dwell on the past.
chapter 2
The story tells us that "Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time," journeying sporadically through his life. Born in 1922 in Ilium, New York, Billy is a peculiar, weak child who later becomes a well-off eye doctor after surviving war service in Germany and a mental breakdown. In 1968, Billy lives through a plane wreck in Vermont, but his wife doesn't survive an unrelated incident. After his recovery, Billy speaks about his 1967 alien abduction on a radio show in New York. When Billy's adult daughter, Barbara, learns about this, she worries about his mental state and brings him back home. Shortly thereafter, Billy pens a letter about the aliens to a local newspaper. As soon as this letter is printed, Billy starts work on another about his lessons from the Tralfamadore aliens. He expects this letter to bring comfort to many by clarifying the true nature of time. However, Barbara only grows increasingly upset with his actions. The narrative then takes us back to Billy's army days. It tells of his bewildered journey behind enemy lines following the disastrous Battle of the Bulge in WWII. Billy, alongside three other American soldiers, is saved repeatedly by Roland Weary, a man desperate to be a hero. Billy's first time-shift happens as he rests against a tree in a Luxembourg forest, feeling hopeless and left behind by the others. He experiences the extremes of his existence, from his death and birth to a childhood memory of being forced to swim. Billy then jumps to 1965, aged forty-one, visiting his mother in a nursing home. A blink takes him to a 1958 banquet for his son, Robert, then another blink to a 1961 party where he's unfaithfully drunk. From there, he is abruptly taken back to the war, woken by a shaking Roland Weary. Weary and Billy are abandoned by the two scouts, leading to Weary's fury as he's always been left behind. He has seen them as the Three Musketeers and blames Billy for their breakup. Billy is then abruptly pulled to a 1957 speech he's giving as the president of the Ilium Lions Club, before being dragged back to the war as he and Weary are captured by Germans.
chapter 3
Billy Pilgrim had no power over the past, present, or future. German irregulars captured him and Weary, seizing their possessions, including a vulgar picture in Weary's belongings. Lying in the snow, Billy sees a reflection of Adam and Eve in the commanding officer's boots. Weary swaps his boots for the young German soldier's wooden clogs. They are brought to a house filled with prisoners. Drifting off, Billy wakes up in 1967 mid eye examination. Recently, he's started napping at work. After his patient, he makes a futile attempt to engage with an optometry journal. Billy is back as a captive once he closes his eyes. He's woken up and made to move. He joins a flow of marching POWs. A German photographer stages a capture scene of Billy surrendering. He slips back into 1967, driving to a Lions Club meeting through a riot-hit ghetto and a demolished area in Ilium. The devastation reminds him of post-Dresden firebombing. Billy is wealthy, driving a Cadillac with John Birch Society stickers. His son Robert is in Vietnam as a Green Beret, and his daughter Barbara is soon to be wed. At the Lions Club, a marine major talks about bombing in North Vietnam. Billy is indifferent. A plaque on his office wall supports him in such apathy: “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.” Post-meeting, Billy goes home. He cries while lying down for a nap. A bed vibrator called “Magic Fingers,” bought to help him sleep, vibrates while he weeps. He's back in Luxembourg once he closes his eyes, marching. Weary is ahead, his feet bleeding from the clogs. They march into Germany and arrive at a rail yard. A colonel, known as “Wild Bob,” questions Billy if he belonged to his regiment. The colonel asks Billy to seek him out in Cody, Wyoming. The soldiers, sorted by rank and cramped in boxcars, must alternate between sleeping and standing. They use a helmet as a commode. Billy is separated from Weary. His train is stationary for two days. Once the train departs, Billy time travels to the night when the Tralfamadorians abduct him.
chapter 4
Billy finds himself unable to sleep on his daughter's wedding night, knowing he will soon be abducted by the Tralfamadorians. He strolls through the moonlit house, answering a wrong-number call from a drunken stranger. He then uncorks a half-drunk champagne bottle and gazes at a late-night World War II documentary. Temporally disoriented, Billy envisions the war in reverse order, with planes retracting their bombs, guns extracting bullets, and weapons being dismantled and buried, harmless. In his altered state, humanity's history reverts to Adam and Eve. Expecting the alien spacecraft, Billy ventures into his backyard. The saucer, announced by a tuneful noise resembling an owl's hoot, lands. Once inside, Billy questions his selection, which the Tralfamadorians dismiss as a typical earthling response. They explain that the moment simply exists, with all beings ensnared in it. Next, Billy is put under and thrust through time due to the spaceship's acceleration. He finds himself in a boxcar traversing Germany. His sleep is restless, causing others to avoid sharing their sleeping shifts with him. By the ninth day of the journey, death starts claiming some of the captives. Roland Weary, in a different car, dies after accusing Billy of his death to everyone present. A car thief, Paul Lazzaro, vows revenge on Billy for Weary's demise. Upon arrival at a prison camp on the tenth night, the prisoners are given coats and showers, and their clothes are deloused. Among them is Edgar Derby, an older teacher. As the shower water flows, Billy travels back to his infancy and his middle-aged years before returning to the spacecraft. He asks about his location and the reason for his presence. The Tralfamadorian response emphasizes the preset nature of time and existence, pointing out that only on Earth is there a concept of free will.
chapter 5
Billy, in his Tralfamadorian zoo enclosure, reads Valley of the Dolls, the solitary terrestrial book available. He discovers Tralfamadorian literature consists of cryptic, telegram-style symbols divided by stars. Billy's memory bounces between his childhood trip to the American West and the German prisoner camp. Post-shower and registration in the camp, the Americans join British officers with surplus supplies. The Brits initially welcome the Americans with a feast but quickly become appalled by their condition. During a Cinderella play, Billy's hysterical laughter lands him in the camp's “hospital”. He awakens drugged in a New York veterans’ mental ward in 1948, where he had voluntarily committed himself during his final year of optometry school, finding life pointless post-war. His ward-mate, ex-captain Eliot Rosewater, introduces Billy to the sci-fi works of Kilgore Trout. Billy's mother visits, causing him to hide under a blanket. Back in Germany, Edgar Derby guards the ailing Billy, triggering memories of Derby's impending execution. Billy returns mentally to the veterans' hospital, where he chats with his fiancée, Valencia Merble, and Rosewater about Kilgore Trout. Billy finds himself back on Tralfamadore, in his Sears Roebuck-furnished dome. The Tralfamadorians reveal seven human sexes, five of which are invisible to Billy. They explain their moments of war and peace, and that the universe's inevitable end will be caused by a careless pilot. Billy's mind jumps to his wedding night in Massachusetts, where post-coital talk with Valencia about the war sends him back to the prison camp's hospital bed. He stumbles upon the violently ill American soldiers in the latrine, one being Kurt Vonnegut. The next day, Paul Lazzaro, knocked unconscious after a theft attempt, appears at the hospital. A German major recites a critique of American soldiers by Howard W. Campbell, Jr., an American Nazi propagandist. Billy rouses in 1968, working on his letter to the newspaper. His daughter, Barbara, chastises him, turns up the heat, and leaves. Billy's mind travels again to Tralfamadore, where actress Montana Wildhack, brought to mate with Billy, gradually warms to him. Awakening from a dream about Montana, Billy meets a boy whose dad died in Vietnam. He shares Tralfamadorian wisdom, alarming the boy's mom who determines Billy is mad. Billy's daughter is summoned to take him home.
chapter 6
Billy wakes in his prison bed after a morphine-filled night, just as he and his fellow American prisoners are to be moved to Dresden. He discovers an energy-emitting object in his coat lining, which he learns through a telepathic message can perform miracles if left undisturbed. Later, Billy shares the company of Edgar Derby and Paul Lazzaro. The English officers work on a new latrine, leaving the old one for the ill Americans. One Englishman previously assaulted Lazzaro, who now promises to have him murdered post-war. Lazzaro, who relishes in revenge, shares a sadistic tale of having a dog meet its end in agony after it bit him. He further informs Billy of Roland Weary’s dying wish and warns him about answering doorbells after the war. Billy already knows about the fate that awaits him - Lazzaro, now elderly and insane, fulfilling his lethal vow. He knows this because he has repeatedly time-travelled to this moment. By then, he sees himself as a messianic figure, calming a vast crowd by sharing his understanding of the permanence of moments and the insignificance of death. He gives this speech in a domed baseball park in 1976, following a Chinese hydrogen bomb attack on Chicago and the partition of the United States into twenty nations. Moments after his speech, and after prophesying his own death, he is killed by a laser gun. Billy then resurrects in early 1945, having documented these events on a cassette kept in a bank safe. Following a hygiene lecture by an Englishman and the election of Edgar Derby as leader, the Americans are transported to Dresden. Billy, donned in a fur-satin coat, scraps of cloth, and silver boots from a Cinderella production, looks like an absurd war jester. Upon arrival, they marvel at the beautiful city, which Vonnegut, also present, compares to 'Oz'. They are guarded by eight ragged German soldiers and led to a former slaughterhouse, their new accommodation. Dresden, mostly untouched by war and bustling with activity, amuses its citizens with the procession of prisoners, except one who is offended by Billy's ludicrous appearance and apparent mockery of the war.
chapter 7
Billy, about two and a half decades on from his time in Dresden, is on a plane to a convention in Montreal with other vision professionals, among them his father-in-law. His wife, Valencia, bids him farewell as she snacks on a candy bar. The narrator reveals the Tralfamadorians' view of Valencia and her dad, as well as all beings, as mere machines. Billy foresees the plane crash. The optometrist quartet, the Four-eyed Bastards, entertain the passengers with ribald songs, one of which triggers a memory in Billy of a grisly public execution he witnessed in Dresden involving a Polish man and a German woman. Billy dozes off and is transported back to 1944. He is being roused by Roland Weary and he instructs the Three Musketeers to leave him behind. The plane crashes into Sugarbush Mountain in Vermont, with Billy as the sole survivor, bearing a cracked skull. Austrian ski instructors, wearing black ski masks, come to the rescue. Muttering “Schlachthof-fünf”, German for "Slaughterhouse-Five", a phrase he learned in Dresden, Billy is taken down the mountain on a sled by the instructors. A renowned neurosurgeon operates on him, leaving him unconscious for a couple of days. During his recovery, Billy dreams of time travel, one of which takes him back to his first night at the slaughterhouse in Dresden. There, he, Edgar Derby, and German guard Werner Gluck accidentally stumble upon a room full of naked girls showering. This is the first time Billy and Gluck have seen a naked woman. They eventually reach the prison kitchen, where the cook comments on their pitiful state, saying "All the real soldiers are dead." Another dream after the plane crash takes Billy back to Dresden in a factory producing malt syrup. The starving POWs who work there secretly consume the syrup, intended for pregnant women. Billy tastes the syrup on his second day, and his thin body responds with "ravenous gratitude." He shares the syrup with Edgar Derby, who is overwhelmed by the taste and breaks down in tears.
chapter 8
American Nazi spokesperson, Howard W. Campbell, Jr., tries to recruit the malnourished detainees at the slaughterhouse to his Free American Corps. He pledges food and promises they'll return to their home after the war. Edgar Derby, however, bravely condemns Campbell's proposal, upholding the values of freedom and Russian-American camaraderie. An air-raid alarm disrupts their clash but turns out to be a false alert. The narrator reveals that the destruction of Dresden is impending. Billy falls asleep in the meat locker and is taken back to a disagreement with his daughter, Barbara. She attributes Billy’s strange beliefs about Tralfamadorians to Kilgore Trout, who Billy met in his hometown of Ilium. Trout, a manager for newspaper delivery boys at the Ilium Gazette, is surprised that Billy has read his books. Billy invites Trout to his wedding anniversary, where Trout unintentionally frightens Maggie White, a naive and pretty attendee, with his tales about the dangers of publishing fictional stories. A barbershop quartet, the Four-eyed Bastards, performs a nostalgic song, causing Billy visible distress. Trout deduces that Billy has seen through a "time window." Billy is so affected by the quartet’s singing that he has to leave the room. He accidentally barges in on his son in the bathroom and then lies down, trying to understand why the quartet's performance has disturbed him so much. He eventually recalls the destruction of Dresden, where he and other American prisoners with their guards survived the bombing in a meat locker, only to witness the obliteration of Dresden. Billy is taken to Tralfamadore where Montana Wildhack, now six months pregnant, requests a story. He shares the tale of Dresden's annihilation and its aftermath. In the devastated city, the prisoners and guards find no survivors while scavenging for sustenance. They finally reach an unaffected suburb where a blind innkeeper and his family welcome them for the night. As the prisoners settle in, the innkeeper wishes them a good sleep in German.
chapter 9
Valencia, Billy's wife, in a panicked state, drives to his hospital, where he's recovering from a plane crash. On the route, she crashes into another car and drives off without addressing the damage. She breathes in lethal amounts of carbon monoxide from the damaged exhaust system, and dies shortly after arriving at the hospital. Billy, in a state of unconsciousness and in one of his time-traveling episodes, is oblivious to Valencia's death. Bertram Copeland Rumfoord, a conceited Harvard history professor, lies in the next bed, recovering from a skiing incident. Rumfoord, the Air Force historian, is writing a brief history of the U.S. Army Air Corps in World War II, including the controversial bombing of Dresden. When Billy regains consciousness, he appears vegetative, but internally he's planning to reveal his experiences in Tralfamadore and enlighten the world about the real nature of time. He discloses to Rumfoord his presence at Dresden during the bombing, but Rumfoord dismisses him. Billy then time-travels back to Dresden just before the end of the war. With the Russians approaching, many Germans evacuate. Billy, along with other prisoners, stumble upon a wagon which they fill with food and keepsakes. Unaware of the dire condition of the horses pulling the wagon, he is awakened by a German couple who point out the animals' suffering, which moves Billy to tears. Back at the hospital, Rumfoord questions Billy about Dresden. When his daughter Barbara arrives, she takes him home and hires a full-time nurse. Feeling compelled to share his message, Billy sneaks out and heads to New York City to reveal his experiences on Tralfamadore. In New York, Billy finds himself in Times Square, where he picks up four Kilgore Trout books from an adult store. In the store he catches sight of a magazine headline about Montana Wildhack, and a porn film featuring a young Montana. Pretending to be a newspaper writer, Billy manages to get on a radio talk show where he discusses Tralfamadore, Montana Wildhack, and his perspective on time before being escorted out. Returning to his hotel, Billy falls asleep and time-travels back to Tralfamadore where Montana is nursing their child. She notices Billy's time-traveling, which is also inscribed on a silver locket she wears, bearing the Serenity Prayer, the same as on a plaque in Billy's optometry office.
chapter 10
The year is 1968 and prominent figures, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., have been assassinated. News of the Vietnam war casualties dominate the headlines. Billy notes the Tralfamadorians' interest in Darwin’s theory over religious beliefs, and the idea that death is a natural and necessary process. This concept is explored in Kilgore Trout's novel, The Big Board, where aliens quiz a captured human about Darwinism and golf. Vonnegut expresses ambivalence about the Tralfamadorians' concept of endless life. Nonetheless, he appreciates the pleasant moments he's lived. He recounts a memorable instance, returning to Dresden with O’Hare, his war comrade. They enjoy simple pleasures like salami sandwiches and white wine on their flight. O'Hare presents a book predicting a global population of seven billion by 2000, prompting Vonnegut's dry comment, “I suppose they will all want dignity.” Simultaneously, Billy is back in Dresden, post-war, engaged in an unsettling task of retrieving bodies. Vonnegut and O’Hare are present too, unearthing the countless casualties of war, labeled “corpse mines.” The death toll is so high that bodies decompose faster than they can be retrieved, leading to a grim, hasty cremation process using flamethrowers. Amid the grim recovery efforts, Edgar Derby is caught with a stolen teapot and is executed for looting, under German orders. As spring arrives, the Germans retreat, leaving behind a war-torn Dresden. The war concludes, nature reclaims its place and Billy discovers a wagon drawn by horses. A bird's chirp, “Poo-tee-weet?” suggests an air of normalcy returning.
