alt title(s): Slaughterhouse Five
It begins like this:
"Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time." It ends like this:
"Poo-tee-weet?"
Kurt Vonnegut's 1969 masterpiece dealing with one man's recollections of World War II (specifically the Allied bombing of Dresden) as he goes back and forth in time. Billy Pilgrim, you see, has become unstuck in time for some unknown reason. Adding to this is also the fact that he was abducted by the Tralfamadorians, aliens who can see in all four dimensions and thus see all the parts of their lives. They don't believe you can change anything, but that doesn't mean you can't choose to focus on a particular time. It is from them that Billy learns to say "So it goes" after something dies.
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
Bombing of Dresden in World War II
is factual, as he was there. Although there is a question about how many died, it is said the book he got the numbers from is wrong. Still, 135,000 civilians or 25,000 civilians, dead is dead. So it goes.
An intensively autobiographical novel (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.
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?"
Tropes in this book include:
- Aliens Made Them Do It: 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 (without clothes)...
- Anachronic Order
- Apocalypse How
- Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism: The Tralfamadorians look like toilet plungers and have five sexes.
- More than that, the Tralfamadorians reveal to Billy that humans have many more than two sexes, its just that we can only perceive two because the others exist in the fourth dimension.
- Blessed With Suck
- Breaking The Fourth Wall: The narrator is Kurt Vonnegut. At one point, when describing the bombing of Dresden, he shows a man standing in the same room as Billy Pilgrim and then writes, "That was I. That was me. That was the author of this book."
- Catch Phrase: "So it goes."
- Divided States Of America: In the future, before Billy dies, he's making a speech in the balkanized United States.
- Early Bird Cameo: At one point, Billy Pilgrim meets Howard W. Campbell, Jr. (lead of Mother Night)
- As well as Killgore Trout.
- Fantastic Romance
- Foregone Conclusion: 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 an 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.
- Mental Time Travel
- Tear Jerker
- Time Dissonance
- Unstuck In Time: The Trope Namer.
- Very Loosely Based On A True Story: There are a couple parts of the book that were based on Vonnegut's own experiences, such as the descriptions of Dresden post-bombing and the guy executed for looting a teapot.
- World War II
- You Can't Fight Fate: One of the Tralfamadorians says, "I've visited thirty-one inhabited planets in the universe.... Only on Earth is there any talk of free will."
