Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic, is one of the world’s great antiwar books. Centering on the infamous World War II firebombing of Dresden, the novel is the result of what Kurt Vonnegut described as a twenty-three-year struggle to write a book about what he had witnessed as an American prisoner of war. Billy Pilgrim, the main character of this novel-within-a-frame, is introduced through a series of scenes in his life. Included in this series is a summation of the most important events, ranging from his birth through his daughter Barbara's bringing him back home from New York City after he appears on a radio talk show.
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Billy Pilgrim is the unlikeliest of antiwarheroes. An unpopular and complacent weakling even before the war(he prefers sinking to swimming), he becomes a joke as a soldier.He trains as a chaplain’s assistant, a duty that earns him disgustfrom his peers. With scant preparation for armed conflict, no weapons,and even an improper uniform, he is thrust abruptly into duty atthe Battle of the Bulge. The farcical spectacle created by Billy’sinappropriate clothing accentuates the absurdity of such a scrawny,mild-mannered soldier. His azure toga, a leftover scrap of stagecurtain, and his fur-lined overcoat, several sizes too small, throwhis incongruity into relief. They underscore a central irony: sucha creature could walk through war, oblivious yet unscathed, while somany others with more appropriate attire and provisions perish.It is in this shocked and physically exhausted state that Billy firstcomes “unstuck in time” and begins swinging to and fro through theevents of his life, past and future.
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Billy lives a life full of indignity and so,perhaps, has no great fear of death. He is oddly suited, therefore,to the Tralfamadorian philosophy of accepting death. This fact maypoint to an interpretation of the Tralfamadorians as a figment ofBilly’s disturbed mind, an elaborate coping mechanism to explainthe meaningless slaughter Billy has witnessed. By uttering “So it goes”after each death, the narrator, like Billy, does not diminish thegravity of death but rather lends an equalizing dignity to all death,no matter how random or ironic, how immediate or removed. Billy’sfather dies in a hunting accident just as Billy is about to go offto war. So it goes. A former hobo dies in Billy’s railway car whiledeclaring the conditions not bad at all. So it goes. One hundredthirty thousand innocent people die in Dresden. So it goes. ValenciaPilgrim accidentally kills herself with carbon monoxide after turningbright blue. So it goes. Billy Pilgrim is killed by anassassin’s bullet at exactly the time he has predicted, in the realizationof a thirty-some-year-old death threat. So it goes. Billy awaitsdeath calmly, without fear, knowing the exact hour at which it willcome. In so doing, he gains a degree of control over his own dignitythat he has lacked throughout most of his life.
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The novel centers on Billy Pilgrim to a degree that excludesthe development of the supporting characters, who exist in the textonly as they relate to Billy’s experience of events.