Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

Slaughterhouse-Five is the story of Billy Pilgrim, a decidedly non-heroic man who has become "unstuck in time." He travels back and forth in time, visiting his birth, death, all the moments in between repeatedly and out of order. The novel is framed by Chapters One and Ten, in which Vonnegut himself talks about the difficulties of writing the novel and the effects of Dresden on his own life. In between, Billy Pilgrim's life is given to us out of order and in small fragments.

From Contemporary Authors 49:
The main character, Billy Pilgrim, ... is captured in the Battle of the Bulge and quartered in a Dresden slaughterhouse where he and other prisoners are employed in the production of a vitamin supplement for pregnant women. During the February 13, 1945, firebombing by Allied aircraft, the prisoners take shelter in an underground meat locker. When they emerge, the city has been levelled and they are forced to dig corpses out of the rubble. The story of Billy Pilgrim is the story of Kurt Vonnegut who was captured and survived the firestorm in which 135,000 German civilians perished, more than the number of deaths in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. Robert Scholes sums up the theme of Slaughterhouse Five in the New York Times Book Review, writing: 'Be kind. Don't hurt. Death is coming for all of us anyway, and it is better to be Lot's wife looking back through salty eyes than the Deity that destroyed those cities of the plain in order to save them.'

Discussion questions:

To what extent is Billy Pilgrim a Christ figure?

What is the significance of the Tralfamadore narrative?

What role does Kilgore Trout play? Other secondary characters?

In what ways is this novel an anti-war narrative? Is it also anti-American in certain ways? How does the novel compare with other war narratives?

How is warfare presented in the novel? How, in particular, is the bombing of Dresden presented?
Where and why does Kurt Vonnegut insert himself into the text? Are we supposed to view this presence as the "real" Kurt Vonnegut? Does Kurt Vonnegut appear to sympathize with particular views and characters?

How does Vonnegut handle traditional narrative elements, such as time, plot, point of view, and characterization?