Slaughterhouse Five Summary

Summary Slaughterhouse Five, written by Kurt Vonnegut, details an account of the life of protagonist Billy Pilgrim. Told through a third person limited point of view, the story does not follow the traditional chronological pattern of storytelling, but rather is told through a number of flashbacks and instances of time-traveling that occur. Born in 1922, Billy Pilgrim grows up in Ilium, New York. He performs decently well during high school and ends up enrolling in the night classes taught at the Ilium School of Optometry, but although a scrawny-looking kid, the United States Army drafts him during the Second World War. He trains in South Carolina as a chaplain's assistant where he then is shipped off to Luxembourg to be deployed with an infantry regiment. Sadly, his father is killed in a hunting accident soon before Billy leaves. Upon his arrival with the infantry unit, Billy is instantly thrusted into Belgium for the Battle of the Bulge, where he is also immediately captured by the German forces. This is the moment where he first experiences a time-traveling incident, where he sees, in a single moment, his life from past birth to coming death. Pilgrim is then transported to a prisoner-of-war encampment in Germany by means of a crowded, inhumane railway boxcar. Once he arrives, he and may other privates are invited to attend a feast put on …show more content…
These aliens, the so-called Tralfamadorians take him to their home planet, Tralfamadore, where he is forced to mate with a famous movie actress named Montana Wildhack. Here, they live in a zoo where the Tralfamadorians can observe them and other beings from planets outside of Tralfamadore. Here, Billy learns the Tralfamadorian perception of time and life, where when someone dies, they are only dead at that time and are alive and well in another time. They prefer to focus on the nicer moments of