Slaughterhouse Five questions
Lily Rumfoord
Rumfoord's young trophy wife and research assistant. Lily Rumfoord is frightened of Billy, but she lies silent in the next bed as a symbol of the scope of powerlessness and lack of free will.
Why is Mary "polite but chilly"?
She was angry at Vonnegut because she was afraid his book would encourage war, and she did not want her children to die in a war
describe the Americans' arrival in Dresden
Short train ride, relatively comfortable, when they arrived the city was functioning
How does Billy die?
Shot by a high powered laser gun after a speech in Chicago about flying saucers and the true nature of time
what happened during the real Children's Crusade
Started in 1213; 30,000 children volunteered to go to Palestine to convert people to Christianity; half drowned in shipwrecks; half were sold as slaves; a few were sent back home
How is Edgar Derby elected head American?
Nominated by the British officer, ran unopposed
Why do the other POWs refuse to let Billy sleep near them?
The reason why the other POWs refuse to let Billy sleep near them in Slaughterhouse Five is because he kicks, whimpers, and yells in his sleep.
What justifications and critiques of the fire-bombing of Dresden does Rumfoord read?
"Destruction of Dresden" = military necessity
What is Professor Rumfoord's opinion of Billy?
"I could carve a better man out of a banana."; Billy is a vegetable and should die
What did the old man in Billy's past think about old age?
"I knew it would be bad getting old, but I didn't know it would be this bad."
What is Professor Rumfoord's opinion of the raid on Dresden?
"It has to been done. Pity the man who did it"
How did the story start?
"Listen, billy pilgrim has come unstuck in time."
How did the story end
"Poo- tee- weet"; there is nothing to say
What does the bird say to Billy Pilgrim? Why?
"Poo-tee-weet?" -to show that there is no answer as to how something as horrific as the bombing of Dresden could happen
What advice does Lazzaro give Billy?
"Whenever the doorbell rings, have somebody else answer the door."
Guggenheim money
(p 1 N) Money from a fund set up in 1925 by Simon Guggenheim and his wife to further the development of scholars and artists by monetarily assisting them in their research endeavors.
What positive attributes of Dresden does the Englishman share with the American POWs?
- Beautiful city - Food is plentiful - Open city - No military there - The war hasn't touched it
What does the war widow in the kitchen think of Billy, Gluck, and Derby?
- Derby's too old & Gluck is too young & didn't know what Billy was supposed to be - "All the real soldiers are already dead"
Gerhard Muller
-Taxi driver in Germany -Takes O'Hare and Vonnegut to Slaughterhouse -Sends O'Hare a Christmas card
Is there a similarity between the format of Vonnegut's novel and the description of Tralfamadorian novels? Explain.
-not in chronological order, meant to show all of a life not just parts-"There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects."
What two 'lies' does Trout tell Maggie White?
-that it is fraud to write something that isn't real -that God is listening and if she says too many bad things she'll "burn forever and ever. The burning never stops hurting."
What jobs did the author have after the war?
1) Police Reporter; 2) Public Relations Man for General Electric 3) Professor of Creative Writing 3) Author
What do Billy, Gluck, and Derby discover in the first building they enter while looking for the slaughterhouse kitchen?
30 naked teen-age girls showering
Maggie White
A beautiful, if simple woman married to one of Billy's fellow optometrists
Kilgore Trout
A bitter, unappreciated author of several cleverly ironic science-fiction novels that have a great influence on Billy.
Eliot Rosewater
A war veteran who occupies the bed near Billy in the mental ward of a veterans' hospital. Like Billy, Rosewater is suffering from the aftereffects of war, and he finds escape—and helps Billy find escape—in the science-fiction novels of Kilgore Trout.
Werner Gluck
A young German guard at the slaughterhouse. He gets his first glimpse of a naked woman along with Billy. Their shared intrigue and interest in the naked female body unites these two men from different sides, reflecting how fundamentally human feelings—such as lust—can trump differences of political ideology.
What does Campbell write about American POWs in Germany?
Basically, Campbell writes that people in America are poor and those poor people hate themselves. Those people who have no money, blame themselves for that. He says that there is no fraternity between the soldiers and that American POWs are childish and self-pitying.
What does Billy do to occupy his time before the aliens come?
Before the aliens come, Billy watches a late-night documentary on American bombers and their gallant pilots in World War II to occupy his time.
What do the Tralfamadorians suggest Earthlings should learn to do?
They suggest that the Earthlings should learn to ignore the awful times, and concentrate one the good ones. In the book, the Tralfamadorians say, " That's one thing Earthlings might learn to do, if they tried hard enough..." (Vonnegut 117)
How do the Tralfamadorians when Billy asks "why me?"
They think it's a very earthling thing for him to say.
What work was assigned to the Americans in Dresden?
They washed windows, swept floors, cleaned bathrooms, and put jars into boxes and sealed cardboard boxes in a factory that made malt syrup
Mary O'Hare
Bernhard O'Hare's wife. Mary gets upset with Vonnegut because she believes that he will glorify war in his novel; Vonnegut, however, promises not to do so. Slaughterhouse-Five is a condemnation of war, and Vonnegut's decision to dedicate the novel in part to Mary suggests how deeply he agrees with her that the ugly truth about war must be told.
While in the hospital in Vermont recovering from the plane crash, Billy discusses Dresden with another patient. Who?
Bertram
How had the army improved Robert?
Better poster, shiny shoes, his uniform is pressed
Why does Vonnegut refer to the prisoners on the trains as "human beings"?
They were no longer individual people; they were just a mass of beings that eat, drink, sleep, and use the toilet
Describe the German reserves whom the captured Americans passed. How do they compare to the group that captured Billy?
They were violent, windburned, bristly men. They had machine guns, smoked cigars and guzzled booze. They were much healthier and in better shape than the group who had captured Billy.
what is the origin of the phrase so it goes
This is what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people because they have a different concept of time. They believe that all time, past, present, and future, exists forever, so people don't really die. Death is no big deal to them.
What is Tralfamadore? What happens to Billy there?
Tralfamadore is a planet Billy believes he was kidnapped and taken to in 1967; He was displayed naked in a zoo and mated to a former movie star from Earth named Monica Wildhack
What ability do the Tralfamadorians have that Earthlings do not?
Tralfamadorians can see in 4 dimensions: length, width, height, and time Earthlings can only see 3 dimensions: length, width, height,
What does the way Tralfamadorians view the universe and Earthlings tell us about their concept of time?
Tralfamadorians see all of time at once and it's never ending. They don't believe in free will because they think everything has already happened in the 4th dimension.
Why does the widowed mother think Billy is "going crazy?"
He talks about Tralfamadore when no one else believes is true
How does Billy describe the Tralfamadorians?
Two feet high; green; shaped like "plumber's friends" (plungers); Suction cups pointed to the ground; flexible shafts pointed to the sky; with a hand on the top and a green eye in the palm
What does Weary tell the other men in his car before he dies?
Weary tells the other man to avenge his death by killing Billy.
Why does Weary try to beat Billy?
Weary, a huge bully/jerk, had always been ditched by people in the past. He had a pattern of beating the crap out of people when this happened. When the 2 scouts ditched Weary and Billy, this triggered his anger and he started to beat up Billy, almost killing him.
Describe Billy's habitat in the Tralfamadorian zoo.
His habitat in the Tralfamadorian zoo looked like a house in a magazine or a display in the store. There was a couch that turned into a bed, pool table, home bar, and end tables with lamps. The TV didn't work, but a picture of a cowboy killing another cowboy pasted on the television tube.
Billy and the other POWs are used by the Germans to exhume corpses after the fire-bombing. What does the author describe as one of his nicest moments?
His trip back to Dresden with Bernard O'Hare
Epigraph
a quotation or aphorism at the beginning of a literary work suggestive of the theme.
What new technique for disposing of the corpses is devised?
flame throwers
How does Billy describe Dresden after the fire-bombing?
it looks like the moon
What does Trout's story about robots say about the bombing of Dresden?
it predicted the widespread use of burning jellied gasoline on human beings
Why does the German photographer take a picture of Billy's and Weary's feet?
to show the German public how badly equipped the American Army was.
nacreous
pearly, lustrous
In his novel, The Gospel from Outer Space, what does Kilgore Trout say is the message of the gospels? How do the aliens change that message?
the visitor from outer space made a serious study of Christianity, to learn, if he could, why Christians found it so easy to be cruel.
What aspects of the book does the narrator insist really happened?
the war parts
How do the Americans get vitamins and minerals?
they spoon it out from the syrup for pregnant women that is being made in the factory they are working at
what happened to the scouts
they were shot by germans
Why does Campbell visit the American POWs?
to recruit them "for a German military unit called 'The Free American Corps.'"
Bertram Copeland Rumfoord
A Harvard history professor and the official U.S. Air Force historian who is laid up by a skiing accident in the same Vermont hospital as Billy after his plane crash. His reluctance to believe that Billy was present during the Dresden raid embodies the bureaucratic attitude that seeks to glorify the war and its heroes instead of realistically portraying war's destructiveness and its haphazard selection of survivors.
To what does the author compare his first view of Dresden?
A Sunday school picture of heaven
What response does the author get when he tries to get information about the Dresden raid from the Air Force?
A man who also worked with public relations told him he was sorry, but the information was top secret still.
Harrison Starr
A movie-maker and a critic of the state of the novel in the modern world; he contends that wars happen regardless of what anyone does to prevent them.
Lance Rumfoord
A nephew of Bertram Copeland Rumfoord, he is a passenger honeymooning on a yacht that sails by Billy and Valencia's apartment on their wedding night.
Montana Wildhack
A nubile young actress who is kidnapped by the Tralfamadorians to be Billy's mate inside the zoo. Billy wins Montana's trust and love, and fathers a child by her in Tralfamadore. But Billy likely is delusional about his experiences with Montana, whose presence may have been imaginatively triggered by a visit to an adult bookstore in Times Square, where he sees her videos and a headline claiming to reveal her fate.
Roland Weary
A stupid, cruel soldier taken prisoner by the Germans along with Billy. Unlike Billy, who is totally out of place in the war, Weary is a deluded glory-seeker who fancies himself part of the Three Musketeers and saves Billy's life out of a desire to be heroic.
What fatal accident did he cover?
A veteran had a terrible accident while working as an elevator operator when his wedding ring got caught in the elevator grill
the Tralfamadorians
Aliens shaped like toilet plungers, each with one hand containing an eye in its palm. Their philosophies of time and death influence the narrative style of the novel. They perceive time as an assemblage of moments existing simultaneously rather than as a linear progression, and the episodic nature of Slaughterhouse-Five reflects this notion of time. Their acceptance of death, which Billy embraces, leads the narrator to remark simply "So it goes" at each mention of death.
What do the American fighter planes do after the fire-bombing?
American fighter planes came in under the smoke to see if anything was moving. They saw Billy and the rest moving down there. The planes sprayed them with machine-gun bullets. The idea was to hasten the end of the war.
Howard W. Campbell, Jr.
An American who has become a Nazi. He speaks to the prisoners in the slaughterhouse and tries to recruit them for "The Free American Corps," a German army unit that he is forming to fight the Russians. He represents all that is wrong with war; he desires to use people for perverse ideological ends.
what do the Americans find in the suburb of Dresden
An inn, blind innkeeper, and they slept in a stable
Paul Lazzaro
Another POW and the man responsible for Billy's death. Revenge-loving ruffian with criminal tendencies. Arranges for Billy's assassination to avenge Weary's death.
Edgar Derby
Another survivor of Dresden. After bombing, he is sentenced to die by firing squad for plundering a tea pot from the wreckage.
Kurt Vonnegut
Author of Slaughterhouse-Five. Acts as a minor character by placing himself in the story through Metafiction. He was POW survivor of the firebombing of Dresden.
Why is the epigraph of the book "Away in a Manger"?
Baby Jesus and everyone's babies are equally important
Describe the English POWs that Billy and the Americans encounter.
Billy and his group encounter a group of singing prisoners after being dog-tagged by the Germans. They are a healthy looking group of men that the Germans appreciated because they look like true Englishmen. They are fit, they have food and lots of shelter, and they are even having a great time and singing. What is interesting is that they look just like what the author describes in the beginning of the book when he mentions how movies make out war to be glamorous and soldiers to be handsome heroes who always triumph.
Describe the conditions on the trains that transported the prisoners. Describe the car that housed the railroad guards.
Billy and the other soldiers had to talk turns sleeping and standing in the boxcars. They were so crammed in that they could not sit down. They had to use their helmets as chamber pots and pass them down to be dumped out.
When and how did Billy first come unstuck in time? Describe the experience?
Billy first comes unstuck in time in the forest in Germany in 1944. He sees himself from his birth, to when he was a little boy at the YMCA and his father was teaching him to swim, then to 1965 visiting his mother at an old folks home, then to 1958 at a Little League Banquet for his son Robert, then to 1961 at a New Year's Eve party where he was cheating on his wife, then back to Germany in 1944.
Why does the doctor tell Billy to take a nap everyday?
Billy would find himself weeping (crying) for no reason
Barbara
Billy's daughter - age 21; just married; faced with her mother's sudden death and her father's apparent mental breakdown
What is the source of the animal magnetism Billy feels in the prison hospital shed?
Billy's impresario's coat with a fur collar.
Valencia Merble
Billy's pleasant, fat wife who loves him dearly. Valencia and Billy share a well-appointed home and have two children together, but Billy consistently distances himself from his family.
Robert
Billy's son - failure and delinquent in school; becomes a Green Beret (elite soldier) in the Vietnam War
What are the major events of Billy's life depicted in this chapter?
Born - 1922, Ilium, NY, only child of a barber Graduates high school Goes to optometry school for 6 months Gets drafted into the army - chaplain's assistant His father dies in a hunting accident Gets sent overseas - December, 1944, Battle of the Bulge Captured by the Germans Comes back to US in 1945 Goes back to optometry school Suffers mild nervous collapse Marries Valencia, daughter of owner of the optometry school Has 2 kids, Barbara and Robert Gets rich 1968 - in a plane crash in Vermont with other optometrists - Billy is the only survivor Wife Valencia dies while he is recovering in the hospital Goes on radio show in NY City and says he is "unstuck in time" and was kidnapped by a flying saucer in 1967
How does the message of the war movie change when it is viewed backwards?
By watching the war in the opposite direction, it takes on the opposite meaning. World War II was an unbelievably violent, traumatic, and destructive moment in history, but when watched backwards it is transformed into a period of intense healing and care giving. In reverse, soldiers and pilots no longer belong to conflicting groups but to humanity as a whole; they no longer try to kill each other. Instead, they choose to help each other, resulting in the whole human race working together to ease suffering.
How does Valencia die?
Carbon monoxide poisoning after she was in an accident on her way to the hospital to see Billy
How does Derby respond to Campbell?
Derby is one of the only ones who responded and calls him a snake. Derby supported the American ideals and freedom.
What epitaph does Billy think of on his wedding night?
Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt
What souvenirs does he recall the American POW's bringing out of Germany?
He had a ceremonial Luftwaffe saber. A rabid little American named Paul Lazzaro had about a quart of precious stones. An idiotic Englishman had a plaster model of the Eiffel tower, which was kept in a canvas bag. The model was painted gold and had a clock in it.
How does Billy react to the barbershop quartet? Why?
He had never had an old gang, old sweethearts and pals
What happens to Billy on the New York radio show?
He jointed a discussion about the future of the novel
What is the only thing Billy cries about while serving in the war?
He sees the war is suffering
What does the author do to entertain himself late at night?
He tries to call up old girlfriends after his wife goes to bed.
Describe Billy's war experience up to his capture?
He was sent to Germany and arrived right after the Battle of the Bulge. With 3 other American soldiers - 2 scouts and one anti-tank gunner. They are behind enemy lines and have to keep moving to escape. Billy has no boots, no coat, no helmet and no weapon. The anti-tank gunner, Roland Weary, keeps Billy alive.
How does Billy meet Trout?
In an alley in his hometown yelling at a bunch of newspaper boys/girls to see who could sell the most Sunday subscriptions
Describe the Americans' home away from home
It was a one-story cement-block cube with sliding doors in front and back. It had been built as a shelter for pigs about to be butchered.
What is Billy introduced to in the veterans' hospital?
Kilgore Trout books
To what city does the author compare his first view of Dresden?
Oz
Why does the author say that the book "was written by a pillar of salt"?
People aren't supposed to look back at a war
What are the two causes of the destruction that Billy drives through on his way to the Lions Club meeting?
People who lived near the black ghetto hated it so much they burned down a large portion of it and his old house was destroyed due to urban renewal.
What does the author mean by the term "corpse mine"? Is this an apt name?
Pits where bodies are extracted
Describe the plane crash in which Billy is injured.
Plane hit sugarbush mountain, the rescuers were Austrian ski instructors
Billy Pilgrim
Protagonist of the novel; WWII veteran; optometrist; believes he has come "unstuck in time"
Why does science fiction appeal to Billy and Rosewater?
Science fiction appeals to Billy and Rosewater because it is an escape from the reality of their lives into a new world. It also helps them try to re-invent themselves and their universe
Why is Billy upset by 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." (Vonnegut 102) Billy is upset with his mother simply because she is his mother.
How is he captured? With whom?
The 2 scouts ditch Billy and Roland because Billy could not keep up and Roland stayed with Billy. Roland gets so mad that he starts to beat up Billy and they are exposed to the Germans. Billy and Roland are captured together.
What processes do the Americans go through when they arrive at the camp?
The Americans give their names and serial numbers so that they can be reported to the Red Cross. After this, they are marched to sheds occupied by middle-aged British POWs.
Describe the German force that captured Billy. What does that force tell us about Germany at the end of the war?
The Germans had a female German Shepherd named Princess. The dog was shivering and her tail was between her legs. The dog had been borrowed that morning from a farmer. She had never been to war before. She had no idea what game was being played. Two of the Germans were boys in their early teens. Two were ramshackle old men-- droolers as toothless as carp. They were irregulars, armed and clothed fragmentarily with junk taken from real soldiers who were newly dead. They were farmers just across the German border, not far away. Their commander was a middle-aged corporal-red-eyed, scrawny, tough as dried beef, sick of war. He had been wounded four times-and patched up, and sent back to war. He was a very good soldier-about to quit, about to find somebody to surrender to. His bandy legs were thrust into golden cavalry boots which he had taken from a dead Hungarian colonel on the Russian front. The makeup of this group tells us that the German army has no good soldiers left to fight the war.
how did the author find O'Hare
The author asked the telephone operator to connect him to O'Hare late at night when he had been drinking
Describe the car that housed the railroad guards.
The guards' car had beds with blankets, candlelight, a stove and a coffeepot. Wine, bread, sausages and soup.
What difference does the author see in the veterans who "really fought" and the veterans who had office jobs?
The nicest veterans in Schenectady, he thought, the kindest and funniest ones, the ones who hated the war, were the ones who'd really fought.
Why does the photographer stage a picture of Billy's capture?
The photographer wanted a picture of an actual capture, so they made Billy reenact his capture.
Who originally said, "Eheu, fugaces labuntur anni"? What does this phrase mean in English?
The phrase was originally coined by his friend Bernard O'Hare. It translates in English to " alas, the fleeting years slip."
How is Billy lifted into the flying saucer?
The saucer hovered over Billy, and to enclose him in a cylinder of pulsing in purple light. Now there was the sound of a seeming kiss as an air tight hatch in the bottom of the saucer was opened. Down snaked a ladder that was outlined in pretty lights like a Ferris wheel. Billy's will was paralyzed by a zap gun aimed at him from one of the portholes. It became imperative that he take hold of the bottom rung of the sinuous ladder, which he did. The rung was electrified, so that Billy's hands locked onto it hard. He was hauled into the airlock, and machinery closed the bottom door.
Why is the book "so short and jumbled and jangled"?
There is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre.
What does the author mean when he says that Billy "has come unstuck in time"?
They believe that all time, past, present, and future, exists forever, so people don't really die. Death is no big deal to them.
Why do the Germans leave?
To fight the Russians
Bernard O'Hare
Vonnegut's war buddy. Vonnegut visits him and his wife in Pennsylvania while doing research for the book. He grounds the story in reality.
Wild bob
a POW who is captured with Billy. He was a colonel in the army and was from Cody, Wyoming. He is sick with double pneumonia and is mentally unstable. All 4500 of his men had been killed.
androgyne
a being of ambiguous sexual identity; one that combines major aspects of both the male and the female
Valencia Pilgrim
billy's ugly wife who he doesn't want to marry but does anyway. dies from carbon monoxide due to a car crash while going to visit Billy in hospital.
How does the Maori POW die?
died of the "dry heaves after having been ordered to go down in that stink and work. He tore himself to pieces, throwing up and throwing up."
Why do the British POWs send Billy to the hospital shed?
he had a nervous breakdown during Cinderella
What does Billy's encounter with the Marine major tell us about Billy's approach to life?
he is really apathetic and unenthusiastic about everything. He is just going along
What might Billy choose as his happiest moment? Why?
his sun-drenched snooze in the back of the wagon.
mopping up
literally, cleaning up using a mop; in war or in a large project, the final stages of activity after victory has been secured
What two acquaintances does Billy indirectly encounter in the "tawdry bookstore"? How?
magazine article and pornographic novels
What did the author learn in college after the war
nobody was ridiculous or bad or disgusting
rodomontade
pretentious bragging; bluster
What does Lazzaro say is the sweetest thing in life? What story does he tell to prove his point?
revenge; he tells the story about how he killed a dog that bit him
What was the main ingredient of the candles and soap used at the welcoming dinner for the American POWs?
the "fat of rendered Jews and Gypsies and fairies and communists, and other enemies of the State.
