summary 1. Slaughterhouse-five

The Novel Slaughterhouse-Five was written in 1968 by Kurt Vonnegut, who based this book on his experiences in World War II. As a prisoner of war, Vonnegut survived the Dresden, Germany firebombing only because he was stationed in a meat house underground. In the novel, however, Vonnegut does not use real names and the main character Billy Pilgrim is boy from Ilium, New York.
Billy Pilgrim, born in 1922, is a funny-looking, weak high school student, who enrolls in optometry school in Ilium, New York. Before his second year of school, Billy was drafted in to the army to fight in World War II. Billy’s father was killed in a hunting accident just days before Billy ships overseas to join an infantry in Luxembourg. Fighting the Battle of the Bugle in Belgium and is shortly taken prisoner while wondering behind German lines with three other men. Just before his capture, he begins to experience his shifting of time.
Billy Pilgrim has become “unstuck in time,” he travels from one period of his life to another at random times. He is unable to control his shifting of time and does not know where he’s going to end up next. The novel jumps back and forth in time and place. The story involves many deaths, from Billy’s family member s, to war soldiers, to dogs, to even champagne. Following each sentence involve death, Vonnegut uses the Line ‘So it goes.’
Billy is transported to Dresden in a crowded Boxcar with all the POW’s. Upon his arrival, he and the other privates were treated to a feast by a group of fellow prisoners. Billy begins to annoy the other passengers, and they make him stand to sleep or he does not sleep at all on his trip to Dresden. Billy suffers a breakdown, and is hit with a shot of morphine which sends him traveling through time yet again. Soon he and the other Americans arrive in Dresden. They arrive to their camp which happens to be an old meat house which was turned into a prisoner camp. The prisoners must work for their lives by doing various labors. One night, Allied forces bomb the entire city of Dresden, Germany. They dropped incendiary bombs to create a huge firestorm which incinerated most of the occupants of Dresden. Billy along with the other prisoners survived in their air tight compartment. They surface to the city and find a completely destroyed city, where they are forced to dig up dead bodies from the rubble. Days past and Billy is sent home from the war.
A few of Billy’s time travels include ones like these. After his daughter’s wedding in 1967, Billy admits to a radio talk show of being kidnapped from a saucer of two-foot-high aliens, who called themselves Tralfmadorians from the plant Tralfmadore. He was taken to their planet where time seems to stand still. A year there, he could return to not miss a second on Earth. Billy’s daughter seems to think Billy is senile and making things up. Another, in 1968 Billy gets into a chartered plane to go to an optometry conference in Montreal. The plane crashes down and Billy is the only one standing.