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- Setting: Germany during WWII, New York in the ’50s and ’60s.
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Slaughterhouse-Five has several settings: Germany and Luxembourg during World War II, Ilium, New York during the post-war period, and Tralfamadore, the alien planet where Billy is kept in a zoo. The most significant setting in the novel seems to be the German city of Dresden, which haunts Billy the rest of his life.
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Setting (place) The narrative thread of 1944–1945 concerns...
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Slaughterhouse-Five, antiwar novel by Kurt Vonnegut, published in 1969. The absurdist, nonlinear work blends science fiction with historical facts, notably Vonnegut’s own experience as a prisoner of war in Dresden, Germany, during the Allied firebombing of that city in early 1945. It is considered a modern-day classic.
In the novel’s opening chapter, Vonnegut mentions his time as a POW as well as his return to Dresden. He also discusses the process of writing the novel and is a minor character in the work. The next chapter introduces Billy Pilgrim, who is “unstuck in time,” moving throughout his life randomly. Told in chronological order, his story begins with his birth in 1922. Later he is studying to be an optometrist when he is drafted during World War II. He serves as a chaplain’s assistant and is at the Battle of the Bulge, where he meets Roland Weary, a sadistic soldier who saves Billy’s life on several occasions, hoping to be seen as a hero. The two are captured, and, shortly before dying from gangrene, Weary blames his demise on Billy. The latter is transported as contract labour to Dresden, where he and other POWs are kept in a slaughterhouse. He survives the firebombing at Dresden. Billy is later freed and returns to the United States, where he suffers a nervous breakdown. Following his recovery, he marries and has two children while becoming a very successful optometrist.
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Shortly after his daughter’s wedding, Billy is taken by aliens to the planet Tralfamadore and exhibited in a zoo there. During his stay on their planet, he learns that Tralfamadorians have a completely different concept of time: for them, every moment, whether in the past, present or future, has always existed, always will, and will occur over and over again. They are able to revisit any part of their lives at will, and so to them an individual’s death does not matter, as they are still alive in the past. During this time, he falls in love with another kidnapped human, an actress named Montana Wildhack, and they have a child.
One of the most important events in Billy’s life was witnessing the Allied carpet-bombing and firebombing of Dresden (which leveled the city and reportedly killed at least 25,000 civilians), and the descriptions of that horror bring home in gripping fashion Vonnegut’s eloquent antiwar message. Despite its bleak message, however, Slaughterhouse-Five...
Setting (place) The narrative thread of 1944–1945 concerns Billy’s army service in Germany and briefly in Luxembourg, where he is captured after the Battle of the Bulge. Most of the rest of Billy’s life takes place in Ilium, New York.
Slaughterhouse-Five Full Book Summary. Note: Billy Pilgrim, the novel’s protagonist, has become “unstuck in time.”. He travels between periods of his life, unable to control which period he lands in. As a result, the narrative is not chronological or linear. Instead, it jumps back and forth in time and place.
- Kurt Vonnegut
- 1969
Vonnegut begins the story of Billy Pilgrim, a man who has “come unstuck in time” and who was also captured in the Battle of the Bulge, taken prisoner by the Germans, and kept in a slaughterhouse during the Dresden bombings.
Slaughterhouse-Five, or, The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death is a 1969 semi-autobiographic science fiction-infused anti-war novel by Kurt Vonnegut. It follows the life experiences of Billy Pilgrim, from his early years, to his time as an American soldier and chaplain's assistant during World War II , to the post-war years.
Title: Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children’s Crusade, a Duty-Dance with Death; Published: 1969; Literary Period: Contemporary/postmodern American fiction; Genre: Postmodern novel, science fiction; Point-of-View: Third-person omniscient with sections narrated by Vonnegut; Setting: Germany during WWII, New York in the ’50s and ’60s.
