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Slaughterhouse-Five 2. Author and Date Written: Kurt Vonnegut, 1945

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Slaughterhouse-Five 2. Author and Date Written: Kurt Vonnegut, 1945 AP English Book Report Name: Emily Swope 1. Title of Work: Slaughterhouse-Five 2. Author and date written: Kurt Vonnegut, 1945-1968 3. Country of author: Indiana, USA 4. Characters Billy Pilgrim (major)- The protagonist in the novel, he is a World War II veteran and was a prisoner of war during the firebombing of Dresden. Billy suffers from symptoms appearing to be post- traumatic stress disorder. He is seen as weak and pathetic to other soldiers and is shy, but means well. He is very lost when he returns from war, believing that he can time travel and also visiting the planet Tralfamadore. Kurt Vonnegut himself is a minor character in the novel. He was a prisoner of war during the firebombing of Dresden, and therefore many instances in the novel are autobiographical in nature. Bernard V. O’Hare (minor)- Bernard is a real-life friend of Vonnegut’s from war who also survived the bombing in Dresden. He lives in Pennsylvania with his wife and Vonnegut visits the two. He works in the novel as someone Vonnegut can share his thoughts with and have support from. Mary O’Hare (minor)- This is the wife of Bernard whose main scene in the novel is getting in a fight with Billy because she thinks he will glorify the war in his novel. She is opinionated and spoke her mind, and Vonnegut dedicated the novel to her. This shows his agreement with her that the reality of war must be seen. Roland Weary (minor)- He first meets Billy at the Battle of the Bulge. Roland is very unpleasant and is a bully who has an obsession with weapons and violence. Weary blames Billy for his death from gangrene, and makes the war much more awful for everyone he was around. Paul Lazzaro (minor)- He is a POW with Billy and blames Billy for Roland’s death as well. He is basically insane, holding so much resentment for Billy when he does not even know the full story. Lazzaro loves revenge and threatens Billy constantly. Billy sees himself getting killed by him. Edgar Derby (minor)- He is a high school teacher and is older than most of the other soldiers. He gets shot at the end of the war, but was a very ideal soldier who seemed nice and genuine. Valencia Pilgrim (minor)- Valencia is Billy’s wife in Ilium. They have a very strange relationship, as Billy never seems attracted to her and describes her as very large and ugly. She loves Billy so much, but they do not have a relationship that is on a deeper or more passionate level. Tralfamadorians (minor)- These are aliens that live on the planet Tralfamadore and kidnap Billy. The Tralfamadorians put Billy on a display at their zoo with Montana Wildhack. They are green and shaped like toilet plungers. They do not believe in free will and believe in not holding on to anything in the past. Kilgore Trout (minor)- Kilgore is a science fiction author who writes so many books that nobody else reads besides Billy and Eliot Rosewater. He is not very good at writing but his ideas are good and he is very imaginative. Trout lives in Ilium and eventually meets Billy in person. Montana Wildhack (minor)- Montana is twenty years old and an actress. She is beautiful and Billy is very attracted to her. She has a child with Billy but their relationship is not serious. Barbara Pilgrim (minor)- Barbara is the daughter of Billy and Valencia. She does not understand her father and where he is coming from. This results in her being disrespectful, however she does worry about him and wants him to be looked after. Robert Pilgrim (minor)- Robert is Billy and Valencia’s son. He becomes a Green Beret in the Marine Core, and this makes Billy very happy. Robert does not seem to have much of a personality and he does not have a strong relationship with anyone in his family. Bertram Copeland Rumfoord (minor)- He shares a hospital room with Billy. Rumfoord is very accomplished and athletic so he sees Billy as pathetic. He does not have any interest in discussing Billy’s experience at war and is rude. Billy’s mother (minor)- She is insensitive and uninvolved in Billy’s life, so they do not have a good relationship. Billy’s father (minor)- His father was a barber and a manly man who Billy does not seem to be heavily influenced by. 5. Major settings Ilium- Ilium is not a real town, but in the novel it exists in upstate New York. This is where Billy has spent most of his life. He is an optometrist there, and it is where his family is, consisting of his wife Valencia and their two children. His life is very dreary here and Billy never seems happy or satisfied. For the reader this setting acts to show Billy’s reality at home and what he escapes from with his time traveling. Tralfamadore- The Tralfamadorians are two feet high green alien-like creatures that can see in four-dimensions. Billy describes his visits there as being kidnapped by Tralfamadorians, and his first visit occurred the night of his daughter Barbara’s wedding. Billy says that Tralfamadore and earth are very far apart, and they cannot detect each other. The time also differs between earth and Tralfamadore, as Billy could be on Tralfamadore for many years and yet not be gone from earth for even a second. There is a zoo there in which Billy is on display with an actress known as Montana Wildhack, and they have a child together. Tralfamadore is Billy’s escape from everything that is reality and is his past, and it is where he feels special. The attention that he has at the zoo is like nothing he has ever experienced before, and his relationship with Montana is much more passionate than his one with Valencia. Tralfamadorians also put an emphasis on focusing on the better moments in life and living in the present, not the past, which Billy has difficulty with due to his PTSD symptoms. Dresden- Billy experiences many painful, horrible events at war, especially in Dresden where he was a prisoner of war when it is bombed and destroyed. Billy survives the bombing because he was in the basement of Slaughterhouse-Five. His experiences at war are important to the reader because they allow for one to see what Billy has gone through and how his times at war have affected him, causing PTSD-like symptoms and the occurrence of his time traveling trips when he returns. It gives the background knowledge as to what Billy is running away from and cannot deal with. 6. Plot outline Billy Pilgrim is born in 1922 in Ilium, NY, where he grows up. He is not very attractive and is awkward. Billy gets drafted for World War II, and his father died before he leaves. He fights in the Battle of the Bulge but is very confused on the battlefield. He meets Roland Weary here who threatens to kill Billy. They are both taken prisoner by Germans to a Prisoner of War camp in Germany. Weary dies on the way, blaming Billy for his death. Billy meets Paul Lazzaro here who hates Billy and wants him dead because he believes Billy let Weary die, and he also meets Edgar Derby. Billy and Edgar are then sent to Dresden and forced to work as laborers, and their POW camp in Dresden is known as slaughterhouse-five. Dresden is bombed and destroyed, but Billy and the other Prisoners of War he knew survived. Billy soon returns home and completes his education in optometry. He becomes engaged to Valencia but also has to go to a veterans’ hospital as a result of a nervous breakdown. When he is released from the hospital he marries Valencia, has two children, and has a successful business. In 1967 on the night of his daughter’s wedding, Billy experiences his first trip to Tralfamadore. He meets the actress Montana Wildhack and learns the ideas of Tralfamadorians. Billy returns to Earth and in 1968 experiences a near-death plane crash, where he was the only one on the plane to survive. Valencia dies due to carbon monoxide poisoning, and Billy is watched over by his daughter. He decides to share his stories and goes on a radio show and submits an article to the paper. People think he is crazy and his daughter is embarrassed by what he has done. Finally, Billy records an account of his own death, where he is murdered by Paul Lazzaro. The story ends with a scene of Billy searching for bodies in Dresden, which he did have to do after the bombing. 7. Major themes of the work: The effects of war- The destruction and painful experiences that Billy went through demonstrate the destructive effects that war can have on someone Sight- There is a huge emphasis on sight in this novel, from Billy’s choice in profession to his view of the world. Reference to sight is everywhere, literally and metaphorically, because how Billy sees things and his time traveling is what overtakes the rest of his life after war Free Will- The Tralfamadorians believe that free will does not exist and teach this to Billy. They believe that one cannot control their future and should not worry about things in the past or future. Instead people should just live in the present. This helps Billy cope with his experiences at war and the PTSD symptoms he is suffering from.
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