Top 30 Modern Classics - XXII

Slaughterhouse Five

Kurt Vonnegut

Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death, written by Kurt Vonnegut was published in 1969.

Chaplain's assistant Billy Pilgrim is an ill-trained and clumsy American soldier who refuses to fight. He does not like war. He is captured by the Germans during the Battle of the Bulge in 1944. Before the Germans capture Billy, he meets Roland Weary, who derides Billy's cowardice. When Weary is captured, the Germans confiscate everything he has, including his boots, giving him hinged, wooden clogs to wear; Weary eventually dies of gangrene caused by the clogs. While dying in a railcar full of prisoners, Weary manages to convince another soldier, Paul Lazzaro, in putting the blame on Biily for his death. Lazzaro vows to avenge Weary's death by killing Billy.

At this moment, Billy becomes "unstuck in time" and he experiences flashbacks from his former life. Billy and the other prisoners are transported to Luxembourg. By 1945, the prisoners are transported to Dresden to perform labor. The Germans put Billy and his fellow prisoners in an empty slaughterhouse -  "slaughterhouse five". During bombing, the prisoners of war and German guards hide in a deep cellar, allowing them to be among the few survivors. After war is over, Billy is transferred to the United States and discharged in July 1945.

Soon, Billy is hospitalized with a diagnosis of post traumatic stress disorder and placed under psychiatric care. A man named Eliot Rosewater introduces Billy to the novels of an obscure science fiction author named Kilgore Trout. After his release, Billy marries Valencia Merble. Valencia's father owns the Ilium School of Optometry that Billy later attends. In 1947, Billy and Valencia's first child, Robert, is born, and two years later they have a daughter named Barbara. On Barbara's wedding night, Billy is captured by an alien space ship and taken to a planet light-years away from Earth called Tralfamadore.

On Tralfamadore, Billy is put in a transparent dome exhibit in a zoo representing a house on Earth. The Tralfamadorians later abduct a movie star named Montana Wildhack, who had disappeared and is believed to have drowned herself in the Pacific Ocean, with the intention of seeing her mate with Billy. She and Billy do indeed fall in love and have a child together. Billy is instantaneously sent back to Earth in a time warp to relive past or future moments of his life.

In 1968, Billy and a copilot are the only survivors of a plane crash. Valencia dies of carbon monoxide poisoning while driving to visit Billy in the hospital. Billy shares a hospital room with Bertram Rumfoord, a Harvard history professor. They discuss the bombing of Dresden and the professor claims it was justified.

Billy's daughter takes him home to Ilium. He escapes and flees to New York City. In Times Square he visits an adult book store. Billy discovers books written by Kilgore Trout and reads them. Later in the evening he discusses his time-travels to Tralfamadore on a radio talk show and is evicted from the studio. He then returns to his hotel room, falls asleep, and time-travels back to 1945 in Dresden, where the book ends.

(Extracts from Wikipedia)

It is a class book and, undoubtedly, the most influential by the author. 

Namaste

Prabir