Slaughterhouse-Five: Discussion I
Chapters 1-3: Babies, bombs, and Billy Pilgrim
Initial thoughts
We have a lot going on in these chapters. The first chapter begins from first-person, and depicts the narrator’s struggles with turning his experience of the bombing of Dresden into a book. The second and third chapters insert us into this story, tracing the story of Billy Pilgrim as he becomes a chaplain in WWII and is ultimately captured, interspersed with various moments from his life as he becomes “unstuck in time”, all thanks to the so-called Tralfamadorians. It’s a lot to take in, but it’s worth breaking down as best as we can. Let’s do it.
Chapter 1
“There must be tons of human bone meal in the ground.” The scene is immediately set to explore what happened at Dresden—a horror so vast that its buildings were left flattened and bones seeped into the earth. Given the title, its safe to assume that the horror of what happened at Dresden will inform the whole novel
The prisoners of war being locked up in the slaughterhouse is a symbolic choice. They’re meat for the grinder, no better than animals. We saw this same men-as-animals sentiment in The Grapes of Wrath, though the context was different
“But things were much better now. He had a pleasant little apartment, and his daughter was getting an excellent education. His mother was incinerated in the Dresden fire-storm. So it goes.” A marvelous, macabre flourish by Vonnegut. The way he juxtaposes two deeply human needs— a home and education—with the incineration of his mother is shocking but intentional. How can something so grotesque give way to normalcy? Is that the power of time?
So it goes. We’re going to see this again and again. It seems to represent one big shrug, a powerlessness, a resignation to one’s fate, even in death
The book about Dresden—he thought his experience of it would define him, but he can’t just write what he had witnessed in spite of its inherent significance. This suggests the protagonist might still be coming to terms with what he had seen, that he is still traumatized by his memories
Liked this description of war as glacial, unstoppable, a force of nature (3)
I have to say I agree with the protagonist’s instincts about his book ending with the execution of an American, Edgar Derby, by firing squad for taking a tea pot from the ruins. It’s an unmistakable contrast to the indiscriminate slaughter of the bombing campaign. Its deliberate and legal nature calls into relief the bombs falling from American planes that killed tens of thousands of people with far less dignified deaths, none of whom stole teapots
One American taken diamonds and rubies from dead people in the cellars of Dresden…so it goes. (6) The plunders of war, just another inevitability
The narrator describes the war ending: “Then we were sent home, and I married a pretty girl who was covered with baby fat, too. And we had babies.” This notion of “babies” and children is introduced here and will be developed much further in the coming pages
The narrator talks about his education, saying that at the time “they were teaching that there was absolutely no difference between anybody” because, no surprise, universities were woke even during the Cold War. Unreal. When viewed through the lens of war, however, this is absolutely true
You never wrote a story with a villain in it, the narrator’s father tells him (8). My guess here is that he never had a villain because everybody was the villain. The worst atrocity he witnessed during the war was perpetrated by American planes. How can he point fingers when the whole of humanity took part in the destruction of WWII?
I liked how when the narrator relayed the story about the man crushed by the elevator, he was pressured to get a statement from the man’s widow. It reflects the media environment today, where an individual’s grief is viewed only through the lens of content and clicks instead of compassion (9)
The narrator claims the Dresden bombing was “worse” than Hiroshima, and that is untrue at least in terms of casualties (10). But if he’s not referring to just deaths, what does he mean? Worse how? I’m not sure what to make of this
When trying to tell the University of Chicago professor what he had witnessed at Dresden, the narrator relays that the professor “told me about the concentration camps, and about how the Germans had made soap and candles out of the fat of dead Jews and so on” (10). I think this is one of the most important anecdotes so far. A clear example of a “learned” man who dismisses the narrator’s experience and deflects any implication of American atrocity. Does the reality of the Holocaust justify the flattening of a German city and the killing of 25000 people?
Really appreciated the image of carp in the Hudson river “as big as atomic submarines.” (12) It’s an evocative image but also one that suggests that the war—and the subsequent prospect of nuclear annihilation that it ushered in—hangs over the narrator’s life, even in moments so perfect as spending time by the river with his daughter
When he gets to O'Hare’s house, he pictures them reminiscing “in a paneled room,” where two old soldiers can drink and talk” (13). Instead, O’Hare’s wife sets them up at the kitchen table under blinding white lights, which he likens to an operating table. This is more again a subversion of the war nostalgia and myth-making first seen in the author’s inability to write about what he had witnessed. It suggests that the shared experience of the two men is not, in fact, something to be reminisced over, but is instead something malignant that should be extracted
O’Hare’s wife, Mary, strongly criticizes his book, bemoaning how when it’s made into a movie he’ll be played by Frank Sinatra or John Wayne, and this Hollywood makeover will disguise the fact that the men who fought were barely adults
War is encouraged by books and movies, Mary says. And that seems to be the case today. This calls to mind American Sniper (2014), with Bradley Cooper as the star. I worked in the movie theater in those days and never saw the auditorium so packed, even the front corner seat was full. All to celebrate a guy who shot people in the head. To me at the time that was the heigh of patriotism.
The Children’s Crusade as the secondary title functions perfectly, especially considering the futility and needless death of the actual Children’s Crusade that Vonnegut describes
The description of the Prussian siege of Dresden in 1760 further informs our understanding of the novel. It describes the burning and eventual collapse of the the Kreuzkirche tower as it succumbs to cannon fire, and contrasts it with the fate of the Frauenkirche, which withstood the bombs. The Frauenkirche would be destroyed during the bombing in WWII, of course
Liked this quote: “We went to the New York World’s Fair, saw what the past had been like, according to the Ford Motor Company and Walt Disney, saw what the future would be like, according to General Motors.” A light critique of the forces governing American society at that time. I wonder if we’ll see more of this. (18)
Poo-tee-weet. That’s all there is to say about a massacre, because “there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre” (19). Is that why Billy can’t write his book, and why he and O’Hare can barely recall the war? Was it all just too senseless?
“No art is possible without a dance with death.” (21) Does the best art grow out of hardship and trauma?
The allusion to the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah at the end of the chapter whose “great destruction” parallels that of Dresden. Their downfall is brought about by divine judgment as opposed to cold wartime calculation
“And Lot’s wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human. So she was turned into a pillar of salt. So it goes.” Is it human nature to always look back? Must we?
(Side not, the “looking taboo” trope is one of my favorite in all of storytelling, my favorite example of such being the Broadway show Hadestown, which retells the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice). IYKYK.
And Billy Pilgrim becomes unstuck in time.
Chapter 2
We shift from the first person to the third person, now in the midst of the narrator’s finished war book and the story of Billy Pilgrim. It begins just as he tells us it would: “Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.”
Billy’s father dies in a hunting accident, Billy is the only survivor of a plane crash, and his wife dies of carbon monoxide poisoning in a hospital of all places. All of these are met with “So it goes.” Suggesting resignation, the futility of questioning such tragedies
Billy’s status as an optometrist has to say something about perception, and what we’re willing to see. Do you think his occupation is intended to symbolize something about him?
The introduction of Tralfamadore complicates things a bit, to say the least. Their teachings, in which past, present, and future all muddle together, reject time as linear
“So it goes” is revealed to be what the Tralfamadorians say about the dead. The past is alive to them.
Something tells me Billy and his Tralfamadore stories would be a huge hit on Rogan
Billy as a chaplain is an interesting choice, “powerless to harm the enemy or to help his friends.” In other words, he has no place in war. Yet at war he is, not with a rifle but with the word of God and a portable altar manufactured by a vacuum company. It’s all so twisted, but that seems to be the point
Love the introduction of Roland Weary, who I first thought was a grizzled vet until it was revealed that he was only eighteen. That his whole gun crew was killed by a Tiger tank except calls to mind Billy’s future status as the only survivor of a plane crash. Are these men connected in some deeper way?
Weary’s obsession with torture is strange but it’s definitely his dad’s fault, who had a collection of all sorts of fucked up shit. We all had that kid in school who was just a little too enthusiastic about knives
Still, Weary, at only 18, is still innocent. He probably played too much Call of Duty and one day might have to realize that it takes more than just right stick to knife somebody
That the description of an especially nasty triangular blade is followed up Billy’s own memories of gore—a particularly gruesome crucifix that hung on the wall of his childhood bedroom—is a bold revelation. The crucifix is oppressive to Billy, assaulting him as a child and attacking his innocence, himself a victim of the cross just as the child crusaders were
“Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops,” the narrator says of Billy’s mom and her crucifix (39). What do you think he means by this?
About Weary on page 41: “His vision of the outside world was limited to what he could see through a narrow slit between the rim of his helmet and his scarf from home, which concealed his baby face…” Weary’s vision is restricted by both his military training and his life at home. His vision is narrowed, seen only through these two strands of life. In other words, he’s a baby, and he has no concept of war.
Weary’s story of the “The Three Musketeers” further displays his childlike fantasy
Billy’s mom whispering to Billy while sick: “How did I get so old?” This seems to be speaking to an anxiety evident in the text surrounding aging and the passing of time, a perspective that opposes that of the Tralfamadorians who are existing on a different plane
I feel like the detail of Billy cheating with his wife at a New Year’s Party was somewhat glossed over, at least for now. I wonder if it will be a source of conflict for Billy in the future
Billy going by “Billy” instead of “William” for business reasons, but also because there weren’t “any other grown Billys around” contributes to the image of Billy as childlike. The night that he cheats he struggles to find the steering wheel but was in the backseat and not the driver’s seat adds to this imagery of a powerless child, unable to drive
Weary does come back for Billy when he slips out of time (47). For all his flaws, that is undeniably soldierly
The scouts ditching Billy and Weary was a cold touch. Weary can’t escape the schoolyard (49)
And it is the schoolyard the Germans stumble into when they find Weary beating Billy’s ass, and Billy, laughing, still stuck somewhere else in time (51)
Chapter 3
I appreciated the subversion of what was thought to be a fierce, barking military dog into a German shepherd borrowed from a nearby farm, who “had never been to war before” and “had no idea which game was being played,” much like how Weary thinks he is running quads in Warzone. Another example of an innocent being swept up into history.
The golden calvary boots worn by the corporal, were taken from a dead Hungarian colonel. “So it goes,” says Vonnegut. It’s just another part of war, just like the looting of diamonds and rubies.
Adam and Eve in the corporal boots, and the fifteen-year-old German soldier, “beautiful as Eve” further contributes to this development of innocence, but is it one of only momentary innocence, of one destined to be destroyed?
The bullet proof Bible, sheathed in steel and protecting the heart, is a provocative image. That a Bible must be sheathed in steel might indicate that it has no place in a warzone, yet in a warzone it is, its presence incongruous with the bloodshed it bears witness to, a naive insertion of religion and meaning into a senseless and violent place
In the stone cottage, where Billy is placed with other POWs: “Nobody talked. Nobody had any good war stories to tell.” (55) This ties back to what is likely a main theme: the insufficiency of words in the face of devastation, the impossibility of making sense of it
The rabbi chaplain shot through the hand with which he once blessed crowds sure seems to be making a statement (55)
During Billy’s time jump to his office where he surveys the parking lot, he asks the same question his mother did: Where have all the years gone?
The siren going off and scaring Billy, who is “expecting World War Three at any time,” (hey, us too!) is the first revelation that he may be more damaged by his experiences in the war than he realizes
On page 59, Billy drives through Ilium’s “black ghetto” which he likens to war. The sidewalks, crushed by National Gard tanks, remind him of the destroyed towns in Europe. The town where Billy grew up “looked like Dresden after it was fire-bombed,” the neighborhood surrounding his house now empty. Why does Vonnegut make the link from Dresden’s destruction to the decline of American communities?
The description of the major giving the speech at the Lions Club mirrors the American attachment to the bomb and its indiscriminate destruction, exhibited in Dresden and now Vietnam, which the major favors bombing back into the Stone Age (60). It is a similar sentiment to that of the professor who brushed off the author’s experience at Dresden because the Holocaust was so depraved. These evils—Nazism, Communism—are used by Americans as blank checks for their own unchecked brutality
On page 60: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change…” I’m glad Billy found solace in this quote, but this has shitty rib tattoo written all over it
It’s compelling that Billy only weeps in front of the doctor. (61) It suggests a disconnect with his own feelings and an unresolved trauma that’s still buried deep inside. This image called to mind the “operating table” at which the narrator and O’Hare attempted to reminisce about the war. Their memories are not stories but a sickness.
The cripples selling magazines for a rich guy in a Buick seems to be an intentional perversion of the American ethos of hard work, once epitomized by the door-to-door salesman. That he is scam artist, working for a richer man, and may have been injured in one of the wars seems to pervert this image even further. There seems to be some commentary on the American dream here, but what?
Colonel Wild Bob, like Weary, is a man sustained by his delusions. He lost 4500 men, “a lot of them children.” (66) He tells of a great victory, and dreams of a regimental reunion, and dies of pneumonia a few pages later. So it goes.
While Billy shares the railroad car with privates “at the end of childhood” there is one hobo there whose perspective is different, who thinks it isn’t so bad, considering what he’s lived through. I’d like to trace this theme of perspective and how it informs our opinion on right and wrong.
On eating in the rail cars: “When the food came in, the hum beings were quiet and trusting and beautiful. They shared.” (70) Are we sure we aren’t reading Steinbeck?
We end just as this really begins to go off the rails, with Billy time traveling to the day in 1967, when he was abducted by Tralfamadorians. Buckle up.
That ends our notes on chapters 1-3 of Slaughterhouse Five. I said this before with Steinbeck, but this is just the stuff I pulled out on my first read, and I’m sure I missed a lot. Vonnegut’s style alongside the chronology made it even harder to completely take in, but I did my best to try to outline where I think this might be going. Right now we seem to be tracing themes of childhood and innocence, unspeakable destruction, perception, and how trauma can distort it. We are also going to space.
If you’re new to the The Great American Book Club, please make sure you drop some knowledge in the comments below. You can go off any of my points or say something totally different—that’s totally up to you. We’re not seeing a ton of specific commentary on the American experience yet, but it’s definitely there, bubbling under the surface, specifically with regard to the terror that was rained down on Dresden by American bombers, but we’re also seeing some quieter critiques too, about life at home after the war and how it can unfold.
Our next reading assignment will be for chapters 4-5, and will be posted on Sunday March 9. This is about 70 pages.
See you guys in the comments.
My first thought was about Vonnegut’s choice to make the first chapter Chapter One instead of an introduction. He chose to do that so his readers from the get-go understand: this is not a glorious war story. Not that he needs to be so obvious, Billy is the last thing from a war hero since he immediately wants to be left behind, give up, and die.
There’s an innocent idealism in the characters: just the name “Billy” evokes a child, Weary’s dream of being The Three Musketeers, the university that reaches we’re all equal, etc. In my opinion, there aren’t any villains in Vonnegut’s stories because he doesn’t see humans as villains, period. We’re simple, innocent, and we’re all just farting around.
If we’re talking about the American dream, nothing feels more appropriate than this silly image of war. You go to war, forget whatever happened like Vonnegut did, come back and build a beautiful family in suburbia.
The other point in my head is the nature of time. I think it’s no coincidence that he finally got around to writing his book about Dresden during the Vietnam War. He had to become unstuck in time, look back, and make something of his own war while there was a new one raging. War is past, present, and future. It never ends, it’s still happening.
So it goes. Like you said, it’s a rhetorical shrug, because to actually deal with each death independently is too overwhelming.
First time posting. Hello. Scattered thoughts on some of the points made, but i'll do my best to keep them somewhat orderly.
Starting off, I'll be vulnerable and say I did not know what the bombing of Dresdan was. Looking it up and seeing it was an attack where the justification was called into question does sadly remind me of drone stikes of the past./I liked that flourish from him as well and i do think time has an incedible ability to nomalize and water down events such as war, but i also think part of that juxtaposition, along with the "so it goes", has to with compartmentalizing the bombing and the war. This isn't an easy thing to comment on given I've never had to experience war, but with something like being in a city that is being firebombed where a mass of horrible things is happening all aound you, caring or holding onto it can drive a man mad. It may be easier to say "he has a good life now. so it goes". Instead of fighting the current, just swimming with the stream./ I also thought the line about a glacier being easier to stop than a war./ Something that came to mind about the woman pressing him to get a statement and the media enironment today of "how can we get eyes on a story" is just how long thats been going on. There's an old sitcom from the 80's and 90's that made a joke about this that could unfortunatley get a laugh today./ Something i took away from his talk with o'hare in the kitchen, his wife bringing up John Wayne, and even American Sniper is (I don't think this is the word i'm looking for, but i'm drawing a blank) how war can be glamorized or the idea we have of war from media. Frank Sinatra and John Wayne as the heroic handsome soldiers beating down the enemy and even the idea of the classy, cozy paneled room where the old soldiers trade war stories feels like its ripped right out of an Oscar nominee.Reality is far less glamourous and far worse./ "Does the best art grow out of hardship and trauma?" Damn...Art that comes from hardship and trauma may not be the best art depending on how you define it, but I think it stays with people more than most. I believe that (most) people are good. Everyone has some form of suffering they can look at and feel sympathy./ I do think it's human nature to look back and i think we should. learning fom the past can help shape the future./I'm very happy to hear you like Hadesrown as I do too:) My GOD Amber grey's voice!/What I pulled fom the gift shop line was buying some sot of order to life from useless puchases./ I liked the farm dog as well. Again it reminded me of the diffeence between the reality of a war, and what we often get shown./ The bulletproof bible. The part of World War Two that really facinates me is the propoganda and the mindset of the country back then. It made me feel like it was drilled into Weary that "God and country are going to see you through" and he bought into it.
Alright thats all I have for now. I'm sure more will come in space.