Slaughterhouse five

Slaughterhouse Five First Half

Kurt Vonnegut starts off by telling us how he is writing a book “Slaughterhouse Five” but is having trouble remembering what happened. He figures that if he goes to visit his old friend Bernhard V. O’Hare, together they can recollect enough war stories to allow Kurt to write his novel. So he gets there and is given a cold welcome by Bernhard’s wife. After much discussing with Bernhard about the war, Kurt finally finds out why Mary, Bernhard’s wife, as been acting so coldly towards him. She was worried that Kurt’s book would encourage war and in turn kill more young boys. So Kurt assured her it wouldn’t and they quickly became friends.

Billy Pilgrim starts off as a young scrawny boy who is getting ready to go off to war. However his father dies then his mother dies and finally his sister all as he goes off to war. He then finds him self surviving a plane crash and being rescued by three men. One of them is Roland Weary who is wearing many excessive layers of clothing to the point where even his face isn’t visible. He carries a triangular knife for a more gruesome death of the victim. Weary tells stories about how he used to trick people into being friends with him just to beat them up and make himself feel better. The other two men are scout infantry who by the way they act and control themselves clearly have much experience behind enemy lines. Weary is a bit nutty but thrives on being the hero by rescuing the deadbeat soldier Pilgrim. Pilgrim lets the three know several times that they can go on without him but Weary insists on keeping him. So eventually Pilgrim just loses consciousness and becomes “lost in time”.

Pilgrim just appears randomly in different points in his life ranging from his birth to and including his death. In this another side story begins where he goes back to where the aliens from Tralfamador abducted him and taught him about time and how these aliens view time in a completely different way. Instead of seeing things as happening one at a time like humans do, they see everything at once so there is never surprise. They he comes back to the soldiers and finally the two scouts ditch Pilgrim and Weary fearing that Weary and Pilgrim will slow them down. Weary hates Pilgrim from then on. They hear gunshots in the distance and the two scouts have been killed.

Pilgrim gets unstuck in time again and visits more time periods from his life. He again goes back to the Tralfamadorians and learns more about how they see things but looking at their books. He comes back to Weary just to be captured and thrown in a line of other captured soldiers.

The line of soldiers is taken for such a long walk that Weary’s feet are injured badly. They finally are forced onto trains and the narrator talks about how rough it was in the train having to deal with going to the bathroom, eating, and sleeping. People took turns sleeping and Billy happened to be the guy in charge of emptying the bathroom bucket. Weary was in the train in front of Billy and made the other people say they would get revenge on Billy Pilgrim if he died. And he did, along with Billy’s friend the hobo and another friend in the train across from him. They finally arrive to the camp where a bunch of Russians have cleaned up the place and everyone is given a jacket. Billy’s just so happens to be very feminine which he finds out later was just so he could be made fun of. He ends up in a doctors office being consoled by a friend who he knows is going to die.

Then he has another flashback. It is after the war and he is in the mental ward and his mother visits. He feels so bad that she put so much effort into bringing him up and he doesn’t even want to be alive. Then his rich fat fiancé visits and he still can’t believe that he was so desperate that he proposed to her. She however clearly cares about him and tries to help him but he just denies her saying he has what he needs.