Summary and Analysis of Slaughterhouse-Five by Worth Books

Author:Worth Books
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Worth Books
Published: 2017-01-26T23:00:30+00:00

Symbols

Barbershop quartet: A barbershop quartet appears several times throughout the novel during Billy’s various leaps through time. The sight of them during his wedding anniversary party frightens Billy. He realizes that they remind him of a group of soldiers that hid in the slaughterhouse with him during the Dresden bombing.

Kilgore Trout, also a veteran (and a science-fiction writer) recognizes the fear on Billy’s face and asks him if he’s looking through a “time window.” Later, the same quartet perishes on the plane crash that kills Billy’s father-in-law and leads to his wife’s death. Billy is unable to move on from the horrors of war ande is constantly reminded of the atrocities he witnessed.

Horses: In the charred rubble of Dresden, while several POWs scour the ruins for souvenirs, Billy just sits in a green coffin-shaped, horse-drawn wagon and waits for them. The draft horses, however, are in miserable shape, half-starved, desperately thirsty, with hooves so cracked and broken they can barely walk. Two Germans approach Billy and talk to him about the condition of the animals.

At the sight of them, Billy weeps; it is the only time during the war that he does so. The horses’ suffering parallels Billy’s own. They can neither understand nor protest what is happening to them. They damage themselves by obediently plodding through the rubble of the ruined city. The horses are, like Billy, victims of terrible suffering they cannot comprehend.

Serenity Prayer: This prayer (“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”) contrasts with the fatalism exhibited by Billy and the Tralfamadorians. Billy keeps a framed copy of it in his office after the war to remind him what he must accept—everything. Montana Wildhack wears the Serenity Prayer in a locket.

Despite the fact that this prayer has by now reached cliché status, it rings true for Billy. He cannot change what happened in the war, and accepting that helps him cope with its horrors. However, it’s the Tralfamadorians that lead him to find peace, not God. Additionally, the fact that the prayer appears in both the human and alien worlds hint that the Tralfamadorians may not be real.

Slaughterhouse-Five: Also the title of the book, Slaughterhouse-Five refers to the slaughterhouse where Billy Pilgrim and his fellow POWs, ironically, seek shelter and survive the Allied forces’ bombing of Dresden. Normally used for butchering live animals, Slaughterhouse-Five saves their lives.

Outside the building, however, the entire city of Dresden has become a slaughterhouse, with 135,000 people killed and the city reduced to rubble. Billy’s time in the war does eventually lead to his death; a fellow POW kills him years later. Kurt Vonnegut also survived WWII by seeking shelter in a slaughterhouse. His novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, is his attempt to make sense of the war.

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