Slaughterhouse-Five

By:

Kurt Vonnegut

Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time. He came unstuck while he was in World

War II and has been traveling throughout different moments of his life ever since. He has

seen his birth, death, and everything in between several times. Slaughterhouse Five is the

story of Billy's life, but not in order, from birth to death, because that is not how he lived

it.

Billy was born and grew up in Illium, New York. After high school, he went to

Illium School of Optometry but was drafted for the Second World War before he was

able to graduate. He was shipped to Europe but hadn't even been issued a gun or proper

boots when he found himself wandering lost behind enemy lines with three other men.

Two of these men ended up dead, Billy and one other, Roland Weary, were captured by

the Germans and became prisoners of war. Weary blamed Billy for this and for the fact

that he died of gangrene while in a freight train being shipped to a prison with many

other POWs. He told all of them about how Billy Pilgrim killed him. One of these men,

Paul Lazzaro, promised to avenge Weary's death and he went through with his promise

by hiring someone to murder Billy many years later. Billy knew this because he had

already seen it happen many times.

Billy was on this train too, but he was in a different boxcar. He soon found

himself, along with ninety-nine other prisoners of war, at a prison with 15 Russian

prisoners of war. There he was given a coat that was much too small for him. He ended

up turning this into a muff for his hands. He made a toga out of curtains in the prison and

started wearing this too. He also found some boots that were painted silver and claimed

these for himself as well. By the time Billy was shipped to Dresden he was dressed much

like a clown. Dresden was bombed soon after Billy arrived and he, the other prisoners,

and their guards were the only ones in the town to survive. So it goes.

After the war, Billy returned to the Illium School of Optometry, graduated,

married the owner of the school's daughter, had 2 children, and became quite rich. On

the night of his daughter's wedding, Billy was abducted by aliens. He was kept in a zoo

on a planet called Tralfamadore for years where he learned many things. Perhaps the

most important thing he learned is that all moments, past, present, and future, always

have existed, always will exist. Therefore, when someone dies you shouldn't be sad

because they may be dead in that particular moment, but they are perfectly fine in many

other moments. Because of this, when Billy hears that someone died he just says what the

Tralfamadorians do, which is, "So it goes."

When Billy finally returned home, it seemed he had only been gone for a

millisecond instead of the years he had actually been gone. He attended his daughter's

wedding, and then a few years later, while flying on a small plane with other optometrists

to a convention, almost died again. There plane crashed into the top of a mountain and

everyone, except Bill and the copilot, were killed. While he was in the hospital, his wife

died accidentally of carbon-monoxide poisoning. So it goes.

After the plane crash, Billy decided to go public with his story about living in the

zoo on Tralfamadore. Everyone thought he had gone crazy. Maybe he had. At the time of

his death, Billy was in Chicago giving a seminar on flying saucers and the true nature of

time. He knew he was about to die. He told the crowd he would be killed that night, he

laughed about it. He knew Lazzaro was finally going to go through with his promise. And

he did. Billy was shot in the head. So it goes.