Slaughterhouse-Five Summary and Analysis

Chapter 1 Summary

The novel begins with a narration from the perspective of Vonnegut himself. He is however not the protagonist. He informs the readers that the many happenings described in the novel are not fictitious, especially the parts where he describes the war, although the names of the characters have been altered. Vonnegut begins with his experience as a prisoner of war in Dresden, Germany, toward the end of World War II when the city was annihilated by the Allied bombing. Having received funding from the Guggenheim Foundation, Vonnegut, along with his “old war buddy” Bernard V. O’Hare, revisits the city of Dresden in 1967. They had both joined World War II from the American side but were captured and taken as prisoners of war in Dresden and were held captive in a slaughterhouse. On their way to visit the slaughterhouse, they befriend a taxi driver, Gerhard Muller, who tells them that his mother had died in the firebombing. The three also discuss life under the communist reign. Muller becomes one of the two people to whom Vonnegut dedicated the novel. Vonnegut himself. He is however not the protagonist. He informs the readers that the many happenings described in the novel are not fictitious, especially the parts where he describes the war, although the names of the characters have been altered. Vonnegut begins with his experience as a prisoner of war in Dresden, Germany, toward the end of World War II when the city was annihilated by the Allied bombing. Having received funding from the Guggenheim Foundation, Vonnegut, along with his “old war buddy” Bernard V. O’Hare, revisits the city of Dresden in 1967. They had both joined World War II from the American side but were captured and taken as prisoners of war in Dresden and were held captive in a slaughterhouse. On their way to visit the slaughterhouse, they befriend a taxi driver, Gerhard Muller, who tells them that his mother had died in the firebombing. The three also discuss life under the communist reign. Muller becomes one of the two people to whom Vonnegut dedicated the novel.

The author then proceeds to describe his futile endeavor to pen down his experience as a prisoner of war in Dresden. It has already been twenty-three years since he was in the war but have not managed to write anything except the outline of the plot of his writing. He is quite proud of the plot outline that he has drawn with crayons at the back of a roll of wallpaper. Each color of crayon signifies a character that progresses chronologically; all the colors, representing characters, meet at an orange cross-hatching that represents the firebombing, and the colored lines of the survivors emerge and end with their deaths. O’Hare’s and the authors’ lines emerge from the firebombing and find themselves on their way home in an American truck.

Vonnegut then describes his life in America after the war. He describes his marriage, his children, and his stints as a student of anthropology at the University in Chicago, a police reporter for Chicago City News Bureau, and a public relations man for General Electric in Schenectady, New York. While working in Schenectady, he asks the Air Force for some information on the bombing of Dresden to which he gets the response that the information is classified and still is top secret. Vonnegut is extremely surprised and responds: “Secret? … My God—from whom?”

Around 1964, while living at Cape Cod, Vonnegut takes his daughter and her friend to Pennsylvania to pay a visit to his friend Bernhard V. O’Hare and his wife, Mary O’Hare. When Vonnegut reveals his intention of writing a book on his experience at Dresden, Mary is repulsed by the idea that Vonnegut will project himself and the other soldiers as heroes of the war in his writing, when, in reality, they were mere “babies.” Vonnegut, realizing the point that Mary is trying to make, promises her that he will not glorify war and will call the book The Children’s Crusade. This becomes the subtitle of Slaughterhouse-Five. The book is also dedicated to Mary O’Hare along with Gerhard Muller.

A few years later after his visit to the O’Hares, while teaching at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Vonnegut is contracted by a publisher to write three books; the book on Dresden being the first. The book is a short one and is mostly jumbled and jangled. He explains the narrative to be so as he believes that “there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre.”

On his way to Dresden, the author stays at a Boston hotel, where the concept of time for him becomes distorted, and he feels that someone is playing a trick on him by tampering the clocks. While reading the Bible, he sympathizes with Lot’s wife, who was turned to a pillar of salt as she looked back at the burning city of Gomorrah against God’s will. Vonnegut muses on the war book he has just written as an inevitable failure as it has been written by a pillar of salt. He decides to not look back anymore and provides a description about the beginning and the ending of the book.

Chapter 1 Analysis

The first chapter of the novel does not read as part of the rest of the novel. It reads more like a preface. Vonnegut narrates the chapter from his own perspective; thus, introducing autobiographical elements in the novel. He discusses what to expect in the novel and how the first chapter is written after writing the other chapters. He lets the readers know that although the book is a work of fiction, yet the “war parts” in the novel are true, adding factual elements to Slaughterhouse-Five. He exemplifies the redundancy of war and the absurdity of behavioral patterns during a war through the incident of a man who was executed for stealing a teapot; he asserts that this incident is true. It is this absurdity which the author revisits and stresses on time and again through the course of the novel. He makes it evidently apparent that the novel is a concoction of facts and fiction, where facts often can be more bizarre and horrifying than fiction. While describing the process of writing the novel, Vonnegut ends up being a character himself in the narrative.

As he refers to the death of Gerard Muller, he utters, “So it goes,” which occurs repeatedly in the novel after the death of any character is mentioned. The phrase becomes a symbol of acquiescence.

Vonnegut’s narrative in this novel is intricate, structured, and sequential, as exposed by the author himself while elaborating the plot outline at the back of the roll of a wallpaper. Yet, Vonnegut has spent twenty-three years before he could write the novel. He believes that a linear and organized plot can’t capture the futility, horror, and absurdity of a war. He realizes that “there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre.” Therefore, he comes up with a fragmented and disjointed narrative propagated by the protagonist’s—Billy Pilgrim—ability to travel back and forth through time. This fragmentation mirrors Vonnegut’s feeling of confusion about the war and the instability it generates.

Vonnegut dedicates the novel to two people: Gerard Muller and Mary O’Hare. The former, a German cab driver whom the author meets at Dresden while revisiting the city, lost his mother to the war. The latter is repulsed with the idea of glorifying the concept of war. Through his dedication, Vonnegut makes it evident that Slaughterhouse-Five is an anti-war novel and not a war novel. He also makes the point of the futility of a war for everyone in dedicating the book to both an American and a German—two nationalities fighting on the opposite spectrum of the war.