Slaughterhouse-Five: Or, The Children's Crusade, a Duty-Dance with Death: Analysis of Major Characters
"Slaughterhouse-Five: Or, The Children's Crusade, a Duty-Dance with Death" is a novel by Kurt Vonnegut that intertwines the realities of war with elements of science fiction and absurdism. The story follows Billy Pilgrim, an optometrist who becomes "unstuck in time," experiencing moments from his life in a nonlinear fashion, including his traumatic experiences as a prisoner of war during the fire-bombing of Dresden. This nonlinear narrative reflects the chaotic nature of memory and trauma, illustrating how the horrors of war can lead to disconnection from reality.
Key characters include Kurt Vonnegut himself, who serves as a narrator reflecting on his own wartime experiences, and Montana Wildhack, a film star who becomes Billy's companion on the alien planet Tralfamadore. Other significant figures include Valencia Merble Pilgrim, Billy’s wife; Edgar Derby, an idealistic soldier executed for a minor crime; and Howard W. Campbell, Jr., an American collaborator with the Nazis. Through these diverse characters, Vonnegut explores themes of fatalism, the absurdity of war, and the impact of trauma on the human psyche. The novel remains a poignant critique of both historical and fictional narratives surrounding conflict, offering a complex view of human experience amid the chaos of war.
Slaughterhouse-Five: Or, The Children's Crusade, a Duty-Dance with Death: Analysis of Major Characters
Author: Kurt Vonnegut
First published: 1969
Genre: Novel
Locale: Dresden, Germany, and Ilium, New York
Plot: Science fiction
Time: 1922–1976
Billy Pilgrim, a conservative, middle-aged optometrist living in upstate Ilium, New York. Born in 1922, Pilgrim leads a very bland life, except for the facts that at the end of World War II he came “unstuck in time” and began to jump back and forth among past, present, and future, and that in 1967 he was captured by a flying saucer from the planet Tralfamadore. The novel's jerky structure mirrors his interplanetary and time travel. Pilgrim is thus a schizophrenic character: An apathetic, almost autistic widower in the present, he is also a crackpot visionary who claims to have visited another planet and to speak as a prophet. The cause of Pilgrim's schizoid behavior, as the author makes clear, is the horror he witnessed in Dresden as a prisoner of war when that beautiful old German city was systematically incinerated by American bombers.
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., the author of the novel and a character in it, living on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. The first and last chapters of the novel form a frame around the narrative proper. In them, Vonnegut describes his trip with his wartime buddy, Bernard V. O'Hare, back to Dresden, Germany, where they were imprisoned during World War II, as well as current events (for example, the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy). The persona of this narrator is naïve, idealistic, and fixated on World War II, especially on the fire-bombing of Dresden, a city of no apparent military significance. As he tells readers, Vonnegut himself was one of the few survivors of the destruction of Dresden, when he and other prisoners of war—including Pilgrim in the novel itself—were entombed in a slaughterhouse below the city and thus survived the holocaust above. Vonnegut surfaces several other times in the narrative, so history, fiction, author, and fictional characters intermingle freely.
Montana Wildhack, a voluptuous film star who is captured and put in a zoo on Tralfamadore along with Billy Pilgrim, and who becomes his lover and bears his child while they are living in captivity there.
Valencia Merble Pilgrim, Pilgrim's wife, a rich, overweight woman who is later killed rushing to his aid after a plane crash in which he is the only survivor.
Howard W. Campbell, Jr., an American collaborator working for the Nazis who tries to convince Pilgrim and his fellow prisoners to defect to the German side.
Edgar Derby, an older, idealistic American soldier and former high-school teacher who stands up to Campbell but then is executed at the end of the war for the trivial act of stealing a teapot.
Roland Weary, a pathetic and tiresome comrade of Pilgrim who dies in the boxcar taking the prisoners to Dresden.
Paul Lazzaro, a mean and ugly member of the band of prisoners being shipped to Dresden who vows to kill Pilgrim after the war in revenge for the death of Weary. He eventually fulfills his threat, in 1976.
Kilgore Trout, a science-fiction writer living in Ilium.