History Literature / SlaughterhouseFive

* DemotedToExtra: Howard Campbell Junior, the main character of Literature/MotherNight, appears very briefly in the novel. Similarly, Eliot Rosewater, protagonist of Literature/GodBlessYouMrRosewater has a small role in the story.

* WritersSuck: Kilgore Trout is a complete failure as a writer. His only fan, Eliot Rosewater (who introduces Billy to his work) says that Trout deserves his obscurity, because while his ideas are great, his execution is terrible.

* EvenEvilHasStandards: Paul Lazzaro, the psychotic and murderous car thief from Illinois, is dismissive of the firebombing of Dresden. Even Lazzaro is disgusted by Howard W. Campbell Jr's treasonous support of the Nazis during the war. Lazzaro's threat to kill Campbell was the only moment when he and Edgar Derby were on the same side of an issue.

* NamesTheSame: André Le Fèvre, the photographer of the woman enjoying sexual congress with a horse, seems to be entirely fictional (as does his infamous photo, for those looking for a copy online). He does, however, share his name with an [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%c3%a9_le_F%c3%a8vre obscure Dutch footballer]] (perhaps Vonnegut saw the name someplace, liked the sound of it, and cribbed it for his fictitious pornographer?).

* IronWoobie: Billy takes all of the terrible things that happen to him and his loved ones with complete detachment because of being "unstuck in time". Billy's resulting fatalistic worldview makes him completely calm and passive in the face of every disaster.

* DeweyDefeatsTruman: We get a glimpse of the "future" in which the US is divided into various sectors, among other things. The year? 1976.

* NamesTheSame: Le Fèvre, the photographer of the woman enjoying sexual congress with a horse, seems to be entirely fictional (as does his infamous photo, for those looking for a copy online). He does, however, share his name with an [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%c3%a9_le_F%c3%a8vre obscure Dutch footballer]] (perhaps Vonnegut saw the name someplace, liked the sound of it, and cribbed it for his fictitious pornographer?).

''Slaughterhouse-Five, [[EitherOrTitle or]] the Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death'' is Creator/KurtVonnegut's 1969 novel about Billy Pilgrim, a soldier who witnessed the bombing of Dresden and subsequently gets kidnapped by Tralfamadorian aliens, who can see in all four dimensions and thus see all events in their lives in no particular order. Billy becomes UnstuckInTime, marries a nice girl, experiences death for a while, befriends Kilgore Trout (Vonnegut's recurring AuthorAvatar in TheVerse), and lives his life like most other humans -- just less chronologically. Tralfamadorians don't believe you can change anything, but that doesn't mean you can't choose to focus on a particular time, and to enjoy life the way it happens. Billy learns to accept life as well as death -- if something dies, then [[ArcWords so it goes.]]

It caused a bit of controversy when it came out, as people were unwilling to believe that "The Greatest Generation" during "The Good War" could do evil. But his story about the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II Bombing of Dresden in World War II]] is factual, as Vonnegut was there, initially as a POW working at a slaughterhouse then involved in clearing the city of corpses and wreckage after the bombing. Although there is a question about how many died; it is said that in the book he got the numbers wrong. Still, 135,000 civilians or 25,000 civilians, dead is dead. [[ArcWords So it goes.]]

* ApocalypseHow: A Class 5 on a universal scale. PlayedForLaughs, mostly.

* AuthorAvatar: Kilgore Trout is a recurring author avatar (although he also has elements of Creator/TheodoreSturgeon, he of SturgeonsLaw and a RealLife science fiction author and Vonnegut's friend/mentor) in many of Vonnegut's novels; however, because of the intense personal nature of the story--Vonnegut himself actually witnessed or took part in many of the book's events--the author himself is present as a character as well.
* AxCrazy: Paul Lazzaro comes off as pretty unhinged, being the poster child for DisproportionateRetribution. He once fed a dog a steak filled with razor wires for biting him, and maintains a list of people he plans on having murdered for even the most minor of slights.
** Roland Weary isn't great either, being both a KnifeNut and [[NightmareFetishist obsessed with gruesome forms of torture]].

* BrickJoke: In the first chapter, the narrator mentions drunkenly calling up old friends with his breath stinking of mustard gas and roses. In the fourth chapter, Billy gets an anonymous call and assumes the caller is a drunk whose breath smells like mustard gas and roses.
** Then, on the last page of the book, the smell of rotting bodies is likened to... [[RuleOfThree guess what]]?

* DefiantToTheEnd: [[spoiler: The hobo. "You call this bad? This ain't bad."]]
** Either that or TemptingFate.
** Also applies to Wild Bob.
* DeweyDefeatsTruman: We get a glimpse of the "future" in which the US is divided into various sectors among other things. The year? 1976.

--> He was proud of never having hurt an innocent bystander. "Nobody ever got it from Lazzaro," he said, "who didn't have it coming."
** Of course, how much they had it coming is from the point of Lazzaro, who has...skewed priorities.

* ForegoneConclusion: Billy knows he's going to die - in fact, he's died over and over again, but merely goes back to a time when he ''wasn't'' dead.
** The Tralfamadorians take this attitude on a ''universal'' scale as they all know a rocket test of theirs will destroy the entire universe and don't much care. They don't care because they see no point in caring. To their senses: It will happen. It is happening. It will always happen. It can not be stopped because it has always happened.

* GentlemenRankers: Edgar Derby.

* HumansAreSpecial: How much this specialness matters is arguable, but according to one Tralfamadorian, "I've visited thirty-one inhabited planets in the universe.... Only on Earth is there any talk of free will." Because of this, they're seen as [[HumansAreMorons idiots]] by the Tralfamadorians.

* MeaningfulName: Tralfama - ''[[Literature/ThePictureOfDorianGray dorian]]''. Like Dorian Gray, the Tralfamadorians are able to move through time, unaffected by it. Also, Billy Pilgrim himself. ('Billy' due to his childlike innocence - explicitly stated in the second chapter, and 'pilgrim' due to the religious aspects of his journey.)
* MentalTimeTravel

* NotAfraidToDie: Because he experiences time in a non-linear way, Billy is not the least bit afraid of his death - he knows that after a while, he'll go back to a time when he wasn't dead.

* OhAndXDies: The narrator wastes no opportunity to remind us that Edgar Derby is going to be executed for stealing a teapot. (When that finally happens, it's told in a by-the-way sentence that doesn't even rate a paragraph of its own.)
** The movie makes a somewhat bigger deal about it.
** The first chapter, in which Vonnegut discusses his writing of the book, has Vonnegut toying with the idea of making Edgar Derby's death the climax of the novel -- a sort of appropriately retroactive LampshadeHanging.
* PeopleZoo: Billy and Montana are residents.

-->The last word was still a novelty in the speech of white people in 1944. It was fresh and astonishing to Billy, who had never fucked anybody.
* PrescienceIsPredictable: Averted. Even though the Tralfamadorians and Billy see the future and are powerless to change it, they accept it gracefully.
-->Billy had a framed prayer on his office wall which expressed his method for keeping going, even though he was unenthusiastic about living. A lot of patients who saw the prayer on Billy's wall told him that it helped them to keep going, too. It went like this: "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.

* StarfishAliens: The average Tralfamadorian looks like a green toilet plunger with a human hand stuck to the handle, with a single eyeball at the center of its palm.
* StiffUpperLip: The English officers are pretty optimistic for being [=POW's=].
* TimeDissonance

* TitleDrop: For both titles.

* UnstuckInTime: The TropeNamer.

* NotSoDifferent: Unbeknownst to a German soldier and Billy himself, they both saw a vision of Adam and Eve in the former's golden boots.

* GentlemanRankers: Edgar Derby.

Filmed in 1972 by George Roy Hill; [[ApprovalOfGod Vonnegut liked it.]] Was later adapted into a graphic novel in 2020 by Creator/RyanNorth and Albert Monteys. Vonnegut was dead in that time. [[RuleOfThree So it goes.]]

Filmed in 1972 by George Roy Hill; [[ApprovalOfGod Vonnegut liked it.]] Was later adapted into a graphic novel in 2020 by Creator/RyanNorth and Creator/AlbertMonteys. Vonnegut was dead in that time. [[RuleOfThree So it goes.]]

''Slaughterhouse-Five'' is Creator/KurtVonnegut's 1969 novel about Billy Pilgrim, a soldier who witnessed the bombing of Dresden and subsequently gets kidnapped by Tralfamadorian aliens, who can see in all four dimensions and thus see all events in their lives in no particular order. Billy becomes UnstuckInTime, marries a nice girl, experiences death for a while, befriends Kilgore Trout (Vonnegut's recurring AuthorAvatar in TheVerse), and lives his life like most other humans -- just less chronologically. Tralfamadorians don't believe you can change anything, but that doesn't mean you can't choose to focus on a particular time, and to enjoy life the way it happens. Billy learns to accept life as well as death -- if something dies, then [[ArcWords so it goes.]]

An intensively autobiographical book (minus the time travel and aliens bits), ''Slaughterhouse-Five, or the Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death'' is one of the books Vonnegut is most remembered for and contains philosophies about free will, fate, life, and death, often through the use of irony. For example, scholarly discussion usually holds that Billy and the Tralfamadorians are the examples of what is ''wrong'' and that free will, and therefore moral responsibility to try to prevent war, futile though it may seem, are the correct paths.

->It is so short and jumbled and jangled, Sam, because there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want anything ever again. Everything is supposed to be very quiet after a massacre, and it always is, except for the birds.\\
And what do the birds say? All there is to say about a massacre, things like ''"Poo-tee-weet?"''

Filmed in 1972 by George Roy Hill. Vonnegut liked it.

Was adapted into a graphic novel in 2020 by Creator/RyanNorth and Creator/AlbertMonteys. Vonnegut was dead in that time. So it goes.

* AliensMadeThemDoIt: The Tralfamadorians put Billy and porn star Montana Wildhack in a zoo together. They don't make them mate but they want them to. You put together a man and woman in a small area for the rest of their lives...

** More extensively, every time someone dies, up to and including Billy's wife, a whole airplane full of his coleagues, his father in law being among them, and ''Billy himself'', it's succintly punctuated by the phrase "so it goes," with no other emotional response.

* YourCheatingHeart: Billy cheats on Valencia with a stranger at a party, and with Montana Wildhack while they are held by the Tralfamadorians. Of course, it's stated that Billy's infidelity at the party was the "first and only time" he was unfaithful, calling into question [[MaybeMagicMaybeMundane whether he was ever abducted at all]].

* AnachronicOrder

** More than that, the Tralfamadorians reveal to Billy that ''humans'' have ''seven'' sexes, it's just that we can only perceive two because the others exist in the fourth dimension.

* EvenEvilHasStandards: Paul Lazzaro, the psychotic and murderous car thief from Illinois, is dismissive of the firebombing of Dresden. Even Lazzaro is disgusted by Howard W. Campbell Jr's treasonous support of the Nazis during the war. His threat to kill Campbell was the only moment when he and Edgard Derby were on the same side of an issue.

** Early in the book, Roland Weary shows Billy a photo from the 1800s of a woman attempting to have sex with a pony. Towards the end of the book, Billy visits a porn shop in New York City years later, and an employee shows him a copy of the same photo.

* EvenEvilHasStandards: Paul Lazzaro, the psychotic and murderous car thief from Illinois, is dismissive of the firebombing of Dresden.

* BreadEggsMilkSquick: "So it goes."

* FantasticRomance

* MeaningfulEcho: ''Several''.