Chapter 7 Summary

Billy, Lionel Merble, and twenty-eight other optometrists are going to a trade conference in Montreal, Canada, in a chartered plane. The time is twenty-five years after Billy’s arrival at Dresden. At the airport, Valencia, Billy’s wife, comes to see off her father and her husband. Billy is aware that the plane is going to crash because he has already lived the moment during his time-travel. Yet, he keeps quiet and decides not to make a mockery of himself. Four optometrists, forming a barbershop quartet, start singing lewd songs for entertainment; Merble is indeed entertained at the vulgarity of the four spews toward Polish men. A particular song sung by these men reminds Billy of a Polish man who was shot in Dresden for sleeping with a German woman. Billy time-travels to 1944 when Roland Weary is harassing him to move when he has already told the “three musketeers” to proceed leaving Billy behind.

The plane crashes into Sugarbush Mountain in Vermont, and no one except Billy—with a broken skull—and the copilot survive. They are rescued by German-speaking Austrian skiers. When they come to check Billy’s vitals, in a confused state Billy mumbles, “Schlachthof-funf,” the name of the slaughterhouse where he was imprisoned in Dresden. Billy is transported to a private hospital where he is operated by a well-known neurosurgeon from Boston. He remains unconscious for two days. During this time, the narrator informs the reader that Billy’s mind remains full of dreams and he time-travels quite a few times.

Billy time travels to the first night in Slaughterhouse-Five when he, along with Edgar Derby and a weak teenage German guard named Werner Gluck, on their way to the prison kitchen, accidently opens the door of a communal shower full of beautiful, naked refugee girls. This is the first time Billy and Gluck see a naked woman in real life. The three men stand there in admiration while the women scream and cover themselves up. Upon reaching the kitchen, the widowed cook comments on Billy’s ridiculousness, Gluck’s underage, and Edgar’s old age. Upon witnessing the three men’s pathetic condition, she announces—“All the real soldiers are dead.”

At Slaughterhouse-Five, the prisoners are made to do various jobs, one of which is to bottle a molasses-like concoction meant to provide nutrition to pregnant women. During his unconscious state in the hospital after his operation after the crash, Billy time-travels to the second day in Slaughterhouse-Five. The prisoners not only bottle the syrup but love to steal a spoonful from time to time. There are hidden spoons in every nook and corner of the place. Billy has his first spoonful of the syrup and shudders with “ravenous gratitude.” He passes a spoonful to Edgar Derby, who bursts into tears after consuming it. When he hears someone approaching, Billy hides the spoon.

Chapter 7 Analysis

In this chapter, Vonnegut successfully creates the distinction between Billy’s dreams and his time-travels, which are, according to Billy, true events in his life. The narrator informs us that “Billy was unconscious for two days after that, and he dreamed millions of things, some of them true. The true things were time-travel.” This goes on to suggest that in order to save himself, or self- preserve, from going absolutely crazy, Billy escapes from reality and relies on spastic time-travel. The readers can interpret the time-travels as nothing but dreams about Billy’s reality. Billy’s dreams are essentially recollections of things that have happened with or around him, which may or may not ride on the carpet of fantastical fabrications. The entire idea of time-travel might be devised to establish how powerful and impactful these dreams are. This theory/interpretation shows the entire novel from a different light and justifies why it is fragmented and disjointed. The interpretation hints at the entire novel being nothing but several dreams that pass through Billy’s head. Like dreams, they are a juxtaposition of reality and imagination. It also hints at Billy’s sleeping disorder, as he often “time-travels” while standing or doing some work. The concept of time either stretches or gets compressed in our dreams. We might dream for a minute where we feel we have experienced many days and vice-versa. This too might be true for Billy, although, in that case, it becomes very difficult for the readers to recognize the timeframe that is grounded in reality.

This is the first and the only time we come across the character of Lionel Merble, Billy’s father-in-law, being directly involved in the action of the plot. Prior to this, Merble is mentioned through the narrator. So far, the reader is aware only of his practice and his success. In the plane episode, however, when he is amused by the barbershop quartet performing derogatory songs, Merble is revealed to be the same offensive, racist, and crude personality as many characters, such as Roland Weary and Paul Lazzaro, are in the novel. Through the depiction of these characters, Vonnegut criticizes toxic masculinity.

However, through the characters of Werner Gluck, Edgar Derby, and Billy himself, the author contrasts between them and men having toxic masculine traits. We find Gluck and Billy witnessing the naked body of a woman for the first time in Slaughterhouse-Five. Rather than getting excited, they are awestruck, hinting at their innocence that is devoid of crudity. Gluck and Billy are both soldiers, although from opposite camps but they lack any soldier-like personality. Vonnegut tries to give these two men some common ground—they see naked women together and are also distant cousins—to show that although they are party to the war and are supposed to fight against each other, they do not have any personal enmity against each other. They are puppets in the hand of power-lusting men, and this is the true face of war—fought by “babies” rather than real soldiers desirous of heroic deeds in battlefields.