Introduction-Chapter 1
Introduction: The first forty-four pages written by the author tell about
his life working at the Custom House in Salem Massachusetts. During his
time of employment there, he discovers some records in the attic and begins
to piece together the story of Hester Prynne, an adulterous man in Puritan
Salem. The Scarlet Letter is his account of the story with as many facts
as he, the author, was able to gather from the documents he found.
Chapter 1: Hawthorn’s first chapter is short, detailing the set up of
colonial Salem. He talks of the town and how essential prisons and
cemeteries are in the organization. Next to the steps of the Salem prison
is a rosebush that has survived centuries and Hawthorn says this bush gives
comfort with it’s beauty to the people who enter and leave the
establishment.
Chapter 2: A town meeting is taking place and the people of the town,
mainly the women, are gathered for the release of the adulteress, Hester
Prynne. She steps out of the prison with the town beadle leading her with
his hand on her shoulder. Hawthorn describes her as beautiful with a very
proud stature that does not cower to the crowd of disdain that surrounds
her. On her chest she bears the scarlet letter ‘A’ that is surrounded by
shining gold thread upon a gown that scandalizes the women of the town.
Clutched close to her breast is the child that was produced by her adultery
and the apparent reason she was not more harshly punished for her crime.
She stood there under public scrutiny, not with a look of shame but almost
bewilderment that her life had panned out as it had.
Chapter 3: Mistress Prynne is placed upon the pillory for three hours so
all can see her shame. As she is standing there with her babe, she notices
a new man in town along with an Indian. From the moment she sees him, she
cannot take her eyes from him. An angry look quickly flashes across the
man’s face at the sight of her and he inquires to the town person next to
him why the woman is made to stand upon the pillory. Both the man and the
readers are informed that Mistress Prynne was married to a man who has not
yet returned from the Netherlands where they sailed from to New England. Because she was so long away from her husband, it is obvious that he was
not the father of her child. The man asked of her sentence, and of the man
who did father the child and the town’s person told him that the father is
not known. The Governor of the town who is standing on a higher platform
then appeals to the Reverend Dimmesdale to extract the name of father from
Mistress Prynne. After an emotional plea to Mistress Prynne, she still
refuses to state the name of the father of her child, and states that her
child has only a heavenly father.
Chapter 4: When Mistress Prynne was returned to the prison, she was in such
mental disarray that the jailer, Master Brackett, decided to call in the
physician. Roger Chillingworth, Hester’s real husband, introduces himself
as the physician for Mistress Prynne and as soon as he enters the room, she
goes perfectly still. Mr. Chillingsworth was the same man who she saw when
she was on the pillory. He began to examine the baby and Hester expresses
her concern that he will hurt the child as revenge on her. They talk about their failed marriage, and how there was never love
between them, and Roger tells her not to reveal to anyone who he really
was. After giving her a draught to calm her, he asks her who the father of
the child was. Again, as she did when asked by the Reverend, she refuses
to give the name of the father. At her refusal, he tells her that he will
find out who the man is and that she not breathe a word of his identity to
anyone.
Chapter 5: Hester was released from prison and free to go wherever she
wished. Instead of fleeing the town she moved to a little cottage outside
of it, and supported herself with her needlework. She sewed for many
different people of the town but kept herself in plain clothing, save the
letter upon her bosom. She took all of the passion of her life and used it
to ply her needle. Much of her work she donated to the poor as penance for
her guilt. Although they all coveted her services, she was still an
outcast looked upon with malice and her sin burned deep in her soul.
Chapter 6: Hester named her child Pearl because she was her treasure in
life. Pearl was beautiful and intelligent, and had an air of a nymph about
her. Even as a baby, the child was fascinated by the scarlet letter Hester
wore upon her breast. This was a constant reminder for Hester of her sin.
Pearl was a happy laughing child who had a fiery passion and temper that
made Hester and others wonder if she was a demon with her black eyes.
Everywhere Hester went Pearl went also. They had only each other. Hester
attempted to raise her daughter with Puritan values but could not
discipline her and Pearl held the strings on whether or not she did what
she was told. Chapter 7: Hester and Pearl went to the Governor
Bellingham’s house to deliver a pair of gloves she had embroidered for him. More than the delivery, Hester was there to plead to be able to keep
Pearl. The people of the town thought that because of her sin, Hester was
unfit to raise her child. When she arrived to the house, the governor was
with other gentleman in the garden and they waited for a chance to speak
with him. As they were waiting, Pearl was examining a shining suit of
armor and saw Hester in it. She was delighted by the sight, and Hester’s
image was lost behind the large shiny red letter that was magnified by the
polished armor.
Chapter 8: The Governor, the pastor John Wilson, Reverend Dimmesdale, and
Roger Chillingworth exited the garden to find their path blocked by the
nymph Pearl. Struck by the beauty of the scarlet clad child they ask her
to whom she belongs. She answers that she is Pearl, and her mother’s
child. As they enter the hall, they see Mistress Prynne and are happy that
she has come so they can discuss what to do with Pearl. Testing to see
whether the child has been properly instructed so far, the dotting John
Winston asks young Pearl who made her. Pearl, though she knew the correct
answer was the Heavenly Father answered that she had been plucked by her
mother from the rose bush by the prison door.
The gentlemen were appalled by the child’s answer and decided that Hester
should not raise her further. Hester was angry with this and pleaded
Reverend Dimmesdale who knew she was capable of guiding the child
spiritually to let her keep Pearl. She argued that God gave her Pearl, and
that they could not take away the only joy that God gave her. After
discussing it further among themselves, with the Reverend giving an
impassioned plea for Hester, they decided to let her keep Pearl. Hester
was thankful, and she and Pearl left for home. Mr. Chillingworth offered
to figure out the identity of the father of the child, but his offer was
refused. As she leaves, Hester realizes that she would have sold her soul
to the devil if it meant she could keep her child.
Chapter 9: Since his first appearance in town, the people looked on Roger
Chillingworth as a blessing. They were thankful that such a learned
physician was given to them. As time went on, Mr. Chillingworth and the
Reverend Dimmesdale became very close. Though he was young, the Reverend
was growing sicker and sicker by the day and the people of the town
implored him to let the physician examine him. He refused but continued to
become closer and closer to the old man. After a while they even began
living together in the home of a respected matron of the town. As time
passed, the people began to look at Mr. Chillingworth differently however.
Instead of seeing a man sent from God to help them, they saw in his old
disfigured form, a servant of Satan that was sent to haunt the Reverend.
Chapter 10: Mr. Chillingworth watched the Reverend searching him for the
secret sin of his soul. Searching for Hester’s lover became the secret
purpose of his life and it clouded his head and heart. Slowly he was
trying to get the Reverend to confess to the deed, and one afternoon began
a discussion with him about unconfessed sin and how it eats away at the
soul. While they are talking, they see Hester and Pearl in the cemetery.
They look up at the men in the window and they wonder if the mischevious
nymph like, Pearl, is true evil. After the woman and the child leave the
cemetery, the men continue with their conversation. Mr. Chillingworth accuses the Reverend that he cannot cure him until he
knows the pain upon his soul because that sin is part of his bodily
ailment. In a moment of passion, the Reverend blows up at him telling him
that he will reveal nothing to the earthly man and leaves the room. This
display of passion makes Mr. Chillingworth exceptionally pleased because it
brings him closer to finding out that his suspicions of Hester and the
Reverend are true.
Chapter 11: As the days went by the Reverend Dimmesdale continued to be
haunted more and more by the sin upon his soul. He would look upon his
companion the physician with disgust and feel as if the black part of his
heart was spilling over into the rest of his life. The people of the town
began to worship him more, saying he was a wonderful and saintly young
preacher. As they looked up to him with greater fervor, he began to hate
himself more. Many a time he stood on his pulpit aching to tell them of
his sin, release it from his heart. However, all he could manage to say
was that he was a terrible sinner, which only inspired his congregation
more because they saw him as virtually flawless. He fasted, prayed, and
kept vigils in order to purge himself, but the sin upon his soul haunted
him without end.
Chapter 12: It was midnight and Reverend Dimmesdale was so tortured by his
sin that he took himself out and stood upon the scaffold that Hester had
stood. He planned to stay there all night suffering from his own shame.
At one point he cried out hoping in his mind to wake the whole town so they
could see him standing there, so his sin could finally be revealed and his
mind eased. However, no one in the town was awakened by his cry. At one
point from his perch, he saw the Pastor John Winston walking towards him,
but the man was wrapped up tightly in his cloak and did not notice the
Reverend on the scaffold.
His mind wandered to what he would look like in the morning when his body
was frozen with cold, and at the image of himself in his mind, he laughed.
His laugh was returned by a sprightly laugh in the darkness that was none
other than Pearl’s. He cried out to her in the night, and to Hester. They
appeared having been out measuring a robe for a man who had died that
evening. At the Reverend’s request, they came to stand upon the scaffold
with him and they joined hands in their sin. Pearl asked the Reverend
repeatedly if he would come stand with them on the scaffold the next day at
noon, but the Dimmesdale refused. Out of the darkness, Mr. Chillingworth
appeared, and the Reverend spoke his fear and hatred of the man. He asked
who he really was, and because of her oath, Hester kept her silence. Pearl
whispered gibberish to him in revenge for him not standing with them the
next day on the scaffold. The Reverend looked up into the sky and saw a
meteor trail that looked like a large red ‘A’ leering at him. Mr.
Chillingworth told him to come home and he left the scaffold with the
evilly happy physician.
Chapter 13: Seven years had passed since little Pearl’s birth. The letter
on Hester’s chest to the village people had become a symbol of her good
deeds. It set her apart from the general population, but many looked on
her as a sister of charity. When someone was in need she was always the
one by his or her side. Many people in town said the A stood for able.
She had changed. She was an empty form, void of the passion and love that
people were able to see in her before. Her luxurious hair was always hidden from the sight of the people. After
the minister’s vigil, Hester found a new cause for sacrifice, a new
purpose. She decided to talk to the old physician, her former husband, and
try to save his victim from further mental torture. After making her
decision, she came upon him as he was walking the peninsula.
Chapter 14: Hester instructed Pearl to go run and play and she went to a
pool and saw herself there. Hester accosted Mr. Chillingworth and he began
telling her of all the good things the people in the town had said about
her. The leaders in the town at the last council meeting had even thought
about admitting Hester to take the letter off her bosom. Hester told him
that if the Lord meant her to take it off her chest that it would have
fallen off long ago. While they began talking, Hester took a good look at
him. In the past seven years he had aged well, but there was a strikingly
different look about him. He wore a guarded look of an eager angry man who
was out for revenge.
They began talking about the minister and Mr. Chillingworth reveals that
had it not been for his care, the minister would have died long ago.
Hester asks if he has not had enough revenge since he was able to torture
the minister every day by burying into his heart. He answers no, that it
will never be enough. Hester tells him that she plans on revealing his
secret to the minister and he tells her that neither of them are sinful and
evil, they just must lead the lives that they were given because of her
sin. They say farewell, and Hester leaves him to gathering herbs.
Chapter 15: Hester watches him for a while from a distance disgusted at the
evil she sees in him. She turns to find little Pearl who was playing with
all the different things in nature. When Pearl goes back to her mother,
Hester sees that the child has made a letter A out of seaweed and placed it
on her chest. Hester asks the child if she knows what the letter her
mother wears means. Pearl answers that it is the same reason the minister
keeps his hand over his chest.
That is all she knows however, and she asks earnestly why she wears the
scarlet letter, and why the minister places his hand over his heart. Ever
since she was little, Pearl had a certain fascination with the letter that
tortured her mother even more. Hester decided it was better to not
unburden her sin upon her child and told her daughter that it meant
nothing. After that day however, Pearl would ask her mother two or three
times a day what the scarlet letter meant.
Chapter 16: : Hester learned that the Minister had gone into the woods to
visit a friend who lived among the Indians. She learned when he was
expected to return, and when the day came, she and Pearl went into the
forest so she could catch him on his return and speak with him in private.
As they enter the forest, Pearl says that she can stand in the sunlight,
but the sunlight runs away from Hester. In response, Hester reaches out to
touch the stream of light that flocks around the little elf-child, and it
vanishes when her hand comes near. Pearl then asks her mother for a story
about the black man who inhabits the forest, which she over heard a woman
the previous evening talking about. Pearl said that people went into the
forest and signed the Black man’s book with their blood and that she heard
the scarlet letter was the black man’s mark on her mother. They traveled
into the deep into the forest and stopped next to a little brook that Pearl
began playing around. After a while, they saw the Reverend Dimmesdale come
walking slowly down the path, and Hester tells Pearl to run and play.
Chapter 17: Hester calls out to the Minister and he instantly straightens
up and looks towards her. He finds out it is she and they inquire on how
their lives have been in the last seven years. They sit down together on a
log, and ask each other if they have found peace. The minister expresses
his sadness and how he feels like a hypocrite teaching others to be holy,
when he himself has a terrible hidden sin. Hester tries to help him by
talking with him and caring for him. He thanks her for her friendship.
She then tells him of Roger Chillingsworth, how he is her husband, and out
for revenge. Dimmesdale is horrified but knew that something was wrong
with Roger Chillingworth. Hester could not take the frown that descended
upon his face, and asked him if he forgave her. He has, and she asks if he
remembers what they had. She hints that they once had a great passion and
affection for each other. Hester talks of them leaving together. Arthur
says he has not the strength to travel that far, but with Hester helping
him, they thought they could do it.
Chapter 18: Together they decide to leave the New World together and not
torture themselves further with their sin so that only God will judge them. To them, they are damned already. Hester unhooks her scarlet letter and
tosses it by the bubbling brook. They make plans together and say that
they will leave for England on the ship that is in the harbor. Talking of
their love and their plans, they call back Pearl, for once happy and with
lifted spirits. Pearl is off in the forest playing and interacting with
the animals. When they call her back, Pearl comes slowly when she sees
them sitting together. Chapter 19: They sat there looking at Pearl as she approached. She had
adorned herself with wild flowers and looked like a fairy child. They
rejoiced in their child as she came towards him, and Arthur was
exceptionally afraid and anxious for the interview. Pearl stopped at the
brook and stared at them. The child pointed at her mother with a frown.
Hester called out to her harshly to come and Pearl began screaming and
throwing a tantrum. Hester realized that the child was upset that her
scarlet letter was not affixed to her mother’s breast. She walked over to
where it lay on the ground and showed it to the child. She pinned it back
into place, and Pearl was pacified and happy again. They approached the
minister and the three of them held hands, and they tried to explain to her
that they were all going to be a happy family. The minister kissed Pearl’s
forehead and she ran quickly to the brook to try to wash it away.
Chapter 20: Arthur Dimmesdale walked home happily. For the first time in
seven years, there was a bounce in his step and a light in his hurting
heart. On his way, he saw some of his parishioners and he had thoughts of
corruption on his mind. He thought about the reaction he would get if he
whispered corrupting things in their ears. There are three different
people he runs into in which he feels this. He resists the temptation to
do this, and wonders why he is having these thoughts. He wonders if he
signed the black man’s book in the forest with his blood. He runs into a
woman known as the town witch, and she tells him the next time he wants to
go into the forest she would go with him. When he arrives home, Mr.
Chillingworth comes into his room, and the Reverend refuses to take anymore
of his medicine. He sits at his desk and reworks the sermon he had planned
for the following celebration.
Chapter 21: A public holiday because of the election was planned and
everyone from that and the neighboring towns attended in their best
clothing. Hester and little Pearl attended but stayed slightly apart from
the crowd. Though everyone was packed close to see the parade, there was
an empty circle around Hester because of her scarlet letter. She had gone
previously to make plans with the captain of the ship that they were going
to take to England, and she saw the captain of that vessel talking to Roger
Chillingworth. The captain then came over to her and informed her that the
physician would be attending the voyage with them. She looked towards him,
and he smiled at her evilly.
Chapter 22: The parade began and Pearl saw the minister when he reached the
front. She asked if that was the same minister who kissed her in the
woods, and Hester told her to not talk about it in the marketplace.
Mistress Hibbins approached her and began talking to Hester about the
minister. Hester denied any involvement with him, and they began watching
as he preached to the people. Pearl left her mother and wandered around.
The captain of the ship told Pearl to give her mother a message for him.
She told him that her father was the Prince of Air. She threatened him and
ran to her mother. Hester’s mind wandered and thought about how she would
soon be free of he scarlet letter and the pain associated with it. Chapter 23: The minister ended his incredible speech and it was one of the
best of his life. The people were inspired and as the parade turned
therefor, everyone would exit. The minister looked exceptionally sick and
called to Hester and Pearl to come to him. Roger Chillingworth ran towards
and tried to get Hester back from the minister. He is dying and with his
last breaths he shouts his sin to the audience around and blesses Hester
and Pearl. He tells the people to take another better look at Hester and
at himself so they see the truth in them. He ripped off the ministerial
band from his chest, and the people stood shocked. The people are struck
with awe and sympathy. The doctor came over the minister, awestruck
because he will lose him and his revenge. Dimmesdale asks Pearl for a kiss
and she finally places one on his lips. Hester kneels over him and asks
him if they will not see each other again, and spend eternity together.
The reverend tells her that their sin was too large, and that is all she
should be concerned. He shouted farewell to the audience and breathed his
last breath.
Chapter 24: People swore after that day that when they saw the minister rip
off the band on his breast that a scarlet ‘A’ resided there. Many thought
that he made the revelation in the dying hour so everyone would know that
one who appeared so pure, was as much a sinner as the rest of them. Roger
Chillingworth died within the year and bequeathed large amounts of property
both in New England and in England to Pearl. This made Pearl the richest
heiress in the New World. Soon after his death, Hester Prynne and her
little Pearl disappeared. Years later Hester came back alone to live with
her sin in her cottage. Pearl was thought to be happily married elsewhere
and mindful of her mother. After her return, many people of the town went
to Hester for advice and help when they were in need. After many years she
died, and was placed next to the saintly minister. They shared a tombstone
and they would be together forever.
Character Profiles
Hester Prynne: A beautiful puritan woman full of strong passions, Hester
Prynne is the main character in the story. Employed as the village
seamstress, she is strong and caring, helping anyone she can when he or she
are in need. With a penitent heart, Hester travels through the story
becoming only a shadow of her former passionate loving self. Other than
the scarlet letter, she was a very moral woman whose only joy in life was
her daughter Pearl. Roger Chillingsworth: The missing husband of Hester
Prynne. He shows up the day that Hester is put on public display and does
not show himself as her husband. A scholar and a man of medicine, his soul
purpose in his life becomes revenge against the man who helped his wife
sin. By the end of the story, he is shown to be an evil character.
Pearl: Looked on as the devil’s child, Pearl is the only one in the story
that is purely innocent. She is passionate, intelligent, and energetic.
Pearl is in touch with nature and with her mother’s feelings. Ever since
she was born, Pearl had a fascination with the scarlet letter that is a
constant reminder for Hester of her sin.
Arthur Dimmesdale: The minister of the town that the people adore, Arthur
was the secret lover of Hester Prynne. He was a sickly man who took his
sin very seriously. He spent the seven years since his indiscretion with
Mistress Prynne trying to repent. He wore down his body with his penitence
and his sin ate away his soul. In the end, he frees himself from his guilt
by admitting to everyone his sin.
Metaphor Analysis
The Rose Bush: A rose bush that grew outside the prison was a symbol of
survival, that there is life after the prison where Hester spent he
beginning of the story. The Scarlet Letter ‘A’: The letter that Hester was forced to wear upon her
bosom, the scarlet letter was not only a symbol of her adulterous sin, but
of the women herself. The letter masks her beauty and passion as the story
goes until it is what she is known.
The Black Man in the Woods: the peoples symbol for the devil. The woods in
those times were a very scary place, and they thought that people that went
into it came out evil and corrupted.
Theme Analysis
The Scarlet Letter is a story that illustrates intricate pieces of the
Puritan lifestyle. Centered first on a sin committed by Hester Prynne and
her secret lover before the story ever begins, the novel details how sin
affects the lives of the people involved. For Hester, the sin forces her
into isolation from society and even from herself. Her qualities that
Hawthorne describes at the opening of the book, i.e. her beauty, womanly
qualities, and passion are, after a time, eclipsed by the ‘A’ she is forced
to wear. An example of this is her hair. Long hair is something in this
time period that is a symbol of a woman. At the beginning of the story,
Hawthorne tells of Hester’s long flowing hair. After she wears the scarlet
letter for a time, he paints a picture of her with her hair out of site
under a cap, and all the wanton womanliness gone from her.
Yet, even with her true eclipsed behind the letter, of the three main
characters affected, Hester has the easiest time because her sin is out in
the open. More than a tale of sin, the Scarlet Letter is also an intense
love story that shows itself in the forest scene between Hester and the
minister Arthur Dimmesdale. With plans to run away with each, Arthur and
Hester show that their love has surpassed distance and time away from each
other. This love also explains why Hester would not reveal the identity of
her fellow sinner when asked on the scaffolding. Roger Chillingworth is
the most affected by the sin, though he was not around when the sin took
place. Demented by his thoughts of revenge and hate, Hawthorne shows Mr.
Chillingworth to be a devil or as a man with an evil nature. He himself
commits one of the seven deadly sins with his wrath.
By the end of the tale that surpasses seven years, Hester is respected and
revered by the community as a doer of good works, and the minister is
worshipped for his service in the church. Only Mr. Chillingworth is looked
upon badly by the townspeople although no one knows why. Through it all,
Hawthorne illustrates that even sin can produce purity, and that purity
came in the form of the sprightly Pearl. Though she is isolated with her
mother, Pearl finds her company and joy in the nature that surrounds her.
She alone knows that her mother must keep the scarlet letter on her at all
times, and that to take it off is wrong.
Through the book the child is also constantly asking the minister to
confess his sin to the people of the town inherently knowing that it will
ease his pain. Hawthorne’s metaphor of the rose growing next to the prison
is a good metaphor for Pearl’s life that began in that very place. The
reader sees this connection when Pearl tells the minister that her mother
plucked her from the rose bush outside of the prison. Finally, for all the
characters, Hawthorne’s novel illustrates how one sin can escalate to
encompass one’s self so that the true humans behind the sin are lost. This
is what makes Hawthorne’s novel not only a story of love vs. hate, sin vs.
purity, good vs. evil, but all of these combined to make a strikingly
historical tragedy as well.
Top Ten Quotes
1) «It may serve, let us hope, to symbolize some sweet moral blossom that
may be found along the track, or relieve the darkening close of a tale of
human frailty and sorrow.» 2) « ‘People say,’ said another, ‘that the
Reverend Master Dimmesdale, her godly pastor, takes it very grievously to
his heart that such a scandal has come upon his congregation.’» 3) « ‘If
thou feelest to be for thy soul’s peace, and that they earthly punishment
will there by be made more effectual to salvation, I charge thee to speak
out the name of thy fellow-sinner and fellow-sufferer.’» 4) «But she named
the infant ‘Pearl,’ as being of great price- purchased with all she had-
her mother’s only pleasure.» 5) «After putting her fingers in her mouth,
with many ungrateful refusals to answer Mr. Wilson’s question, the child
finally announced that she had not been made at all, but had been plucked
by her mother off the bush of wild roses that grew by the prison door» 6) «
‘He hath done a wild thing ere now, this pious Mr. Dimmesdale, in the hot
passion of his heart!’» 7) «Such helpfulness was found in her- so much
power to do and power to sympathize- that many people refused to interpret
the scarlet ‘A’ by it’s original signification. They said that it meant
‘Able’; so strong was Hester Prynne, with a women’s strength.» 8) «‘That
old man!- the physician!- the one whom they call Roger Chillingworth!-he
was my husband!’» 9) «Pacify her, if thou lovest me!» 10) « ‘Hester
Prynne’ cried he, with a piercing earnestness ‘in the name of Him, so
terrible and so merciful, who gives me grace, at this last moment, to do
what- for my own heavy sin and miserable agony- I withheld myself from
doing seven years ago, come hither now, and twine thy strength about me!»
Slaughterhouse Five
Chapter One. Summary:
The narrator assures us that the book we are about to read is true, more or
less. The parts dealing with World War II are most faithful to actual
events. Twenty-three years have passed since the end of the war, and for
much of that time the narrator has been trying to write about the bombing
of Dresden. He was never able to bring make the project work. When he
thinks about Dresden's place in his memory, he always recalls two things:
an obscene limerick about a man whose penis has let him down, and "My Name
is Yon Yonson," a song which has no ending.
Late some nights, the narrator gets drunk and begins to track down old
friends with the telephone. Some years ago he tracked down Bernard O'Hare,
an old war buddy of his, using Bell Atlantic phone operators. When he
tracked his old friend down, he asked if Bernard would help him remember
things about the war. Bernard seemed unenthusiastic. When the narrator
suggests the execution of Edgar Derby, an American who stole a teapot from
the ruins, as the climax of the novel, Bernard still seems unenthusiastic.
The best outline the narrator ever made for his Dresden book was on a roll
of toilet paper, using crayon. Colors represented different people, and the
lines crisscrossed when people met, and ended when they died. The outline
ended with the exchange of prisoners who had been liberated by Americans
and Russians.
After the war, the narrator went home, married, and had kids, all of whom
are grown now. He studied anthropology at the University of Chicago, and in
anthropology he learned that "there was absolutely no difference between
anybody," and that "nobody was ridiculous or bad or disgusting." He's
worked various jobs, and tried to keep up work on his Dresden novel all
this time.
He actually did go to see Bernard O'Hare just a few weeks after finding him
over the telephone. He brought his young daughters, who were sent upstairs
to play with O'Hare's kids. The men could not think of any particularly
good memories or stories, and the narrator noticed that Mary, Bernard's
wife (to whom Slaughterhouse Five is dedicated), seemed very angry about
something. Finally, she confronted him: the narrator and Bernard were just
babies when they fought. Mary was angry because if the narrator wrote a
book, he would make himself and Bernard tough men, glorifying war and
turning scared babies into heroes. The movie adaptation would then star
"Frank Sinatra and John Wayne or some of those other glamorous, war-loving,
dirty old men" (14). Wars would look good, and we would be sure to have
more of them. The narrator promised that it won't be that kind of book, and
that he'd call it The Children's Crusade. He and Mary were friends starting
at that moment. That night, he and Bernard looked through Bernard's library
for information on the real Children's Crusade, a war slightly more sordid
than the other crusades. The scheme was cooked up by two monks who planned
to raise an army of European children and then sell them into slavery in
North Africa. Sleepless later that night, the narrator looked at a history
of Dresden published in 1908. The book described a Prussian siege of the
city in the eighteenth century.
In 1967, the narrator and O'Hare returned to Dresden. On the flight over,
the narrator got stuck in Boston due to delays. In a hotel in Boston, he
felt that someone had played with all the clocks. With every twitch of a
clock, it seemed that years passed. That night, he read a book by Roethke
and another book by Erika Ostrovsky. The Ostrovsky book, Céline and His
Vision, is a story of a French soldier whose skull gets cracked during
World War I. He hears noises and suffers from insomnia forever afterward,
and at night he writes grotesque, macabre novels. Céline sees death and the
passage of time as the same process.
The narrator also read about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in the
hotel room's Gideon Bible. He calls attention to the moment when Lot's wife
looks back and is turned into a pillar of salt. He loves her for that act,
because it was such a human thing to do.
Now, he presents us with his war book. He will strive to look back no more.
This book, he says, is a failure. It was bound to be a failure because it
was written by a pillar of salt. He gives us the first line and the last,
and the central story of the novel is ready to begin.
Chapter Two. Summary:
"Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time." He wanders from moment to moment
in his life, experiencing chronologically disparate events right after one
another. He sees his birth and death and everything in between, all out of
order, with no pattern to predict what will come next. Or so he believes.
Billy was born in 1922 in Ilium, New York. Tall, thin, and embarrassingly
weak, he made an unlikely soldier. He was going to night school in
optometry when he got drafted to fight in World War II. His father died in
a hunting accident before Billy left for Europe. The Germans captured Billy
during the Battle of the Bulge. In 1945 he returned to the States, finished
optometry school, and married the daughter of the school's owner. During
the engagement, he was hospitalized for a nervous breakdown. After his
release, he finished school, married the girl, got his own practice with
help from his father-in-law, became quite rich, and had two kids. In 1968
he was the sole survivor of a plane crash. While he was in the hospital,
his wife died of carbon monoxide poisoning. He returned home for rest, but
without warning one day he went to New York and claimed on the radio that
he had been kidnapped by aliens called Trafalmadorians. Billy's daughter,
Barbara, retrieved him from New York. A month later, Billy wrote a letter
to Ilium's newspaper describing the aliens. The Trafalmadorians are shaped
like two-foot tall toilet plungers, suction cup down.
We now see Billy working on a second letter describing the Trafalmadorian
conception of time. All time happens simultaneously, so a man who dies is
actually still alive, since all moments exist at all times. Billy works on
his letter, oblivious to the increasingly frantic shouts of his daughter,
who has stopped by to check on him. The burden of caring for Billy has made
Barbara difficult and unforgiving.
We move to the first time Billy gets unstuck in time. Billy receives
minimal training as a chaplain's assistant before being shipped to Europe.
He arrives in September of 1944, right in the middle of the Battle of the
Bulge. He never meets his chaplain or gets a proper helmet or boots.
Although he survives the onslaught, he wanders behind German lines, tagging
along with two scouts and an anti-tank gunner named Roland Weary. Weary
repeatedly saves Billy's life, mostly by not allowing him to lie down in
the snow and die. Although the scouts are experienced, Weary is as new to
the war as Billy is; he just fancies himself as having more of a taste for
it. By firing the anti-tank gun incorrectly, his gun crew put scorch marks
into the ground. Because of those marks, the position of the gun crew was
revealed to a Tiger tank that fired back. Everyone but Weary was killed. He
is stupid, fat, cruel, and violent. Back in Pittsburgh he was friendless,
and constantly getting ditched. His father collects torture devices. He
carries a cruel trench knife, various pieces of equipment that have been
issued to him, and a pornographic photo of a woman with a horse. He plagues
Billy with macho, aggressive conversation. In his own mind, Weary narrates
the war stories he will one day tell. Although he is almost as clumsy and
slow as Billy, he imagines himself and the two scouts as fast friends. In
his head he dubs them and himself the Three Musketeers, and tells himself
the story of how the Three Musketeers saved the life of a dumb, incompetent
college kid.
Straggling behind the others, Billy becomes unstuck in time. He goes back
to the red light of pre-birth and then forward again to a day in his
childhood with his father at the YMCA. His father tries to teach him how to
swim by the sink-or-swim method. Billy sinks, and someone has to rescue
him. He jumps forward to 1965, when he is a middle-aged man visiting his
mother in a nursing home. Then he jumps to 1958, and Billy is attending his
son's Little League banquet. Leap to 1961: Billy is at a party, totally
drunk and cheating on his wife for the first and only time. Then, he is
back in 1944, being shaken awake by Weary. Weary and Billy catch up to the
scouts. Dogs are barking in the distance, and the Germans are searching for
them. Billy is in bad shape: he looks like hell, can barely walk, and is
having vivid (but pleasant) hallucinations. Weary tries to be chummy with
his supposed buddies, the scouts, grouping himself with them as "the Three
Musketeers." The scouts coldly tell him that he and Billy are on their own.
Billy goes to 1957, when he gives a speech as the newly elected president
of the Lion's Club. Although he has a momentary bout of stage fright, his
speech is beautiful. He has taken a public speaking course.
He leaps back to 1944. Ditched again, Weary starts to beat Billy up,
furious that this weak college kid has cost him his membership in "the
Three Musketeers." He cruelly beats Billy, who is in such a state that he
can only laugh. Suddenly, Weary realizes that they are being watched by
five German soldiers and a police dog. They have been captured.
Chapter Three. Summary:
The troops who capture Billy and Weary are irregulars, newly enlisted men
using the equipment of newly dead soldiers. Their commander is a tough
German corporal, whose beautiful boots are a trophy from a battle long ago.
Once, while waxing the boots, he told a soldier that if you stared into
their shine you could see Adam and Eve. Though Billy has never heard the
corporal's claim, looking into the boots now he sees Adam and Eve and loves
them for their innocence, vulnerability, and beauty. A blond fifteen-year-
old boy helps Billy to his feet; he looks as beautiful and innocent as Eve.
In the distance, shots sound out as the two scouts are killed. Waiting in
ambush, they were found and shot in the backs of their heads.
The Germans take Weary's things, including the pornographic picture, which
the two old men grin about, and Weary's boots. The fifteen-year old gets
Weary's boots, and Weary gets the boy's clogs. Weary and Billy are made to
march a long distance to a cottage where American POWs are being detained.
The soldiers there say nothing. Billy falls asleep, his head on the
shoulder of a Jewish chaplain.
Billy leaps in time to 1967, although it takes him a while to figure out
the date. He is giving an eye exam in his office in Ilium. His car, visible
outside his window, has conservative stickers on the bumper; the stickers
were gifts from his father-in-law.
He leaps back to the war. A German is kicking his feet, telling him to wake
up. The Americans are assembled outside for photographs. The photographer
takes pictures of Billy's and Weary's feet as evidence of how poorly
equipped the American troops are. They stage photos of Billy being
captured. Billy then returns to 1967, driving to the Lion's club. He drives
through a black ghetto, an area recovering from recent riots and fires. He
largely ignores what he sees there. At the Lion's club, a marine major
talks about the need to continue the fight in Vietnam. He advocates bombing
North Vietnam into the Stone Age, if necessary, and Billy does not think of
the horror of bombing, which he has witnessed himself. He is simply having
lunch. The narrator mentions that he has a prayer on the wall of his
office: "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can, and wisdom always to tell the
difference."
The narrator tells us that Billy cannot change past, present, or future.
After lunch, Billy goes home. He is a wealthy man now, with a son in the
Green Berets and a daughter about to get married; he also is seized
occasionally by sudden and inexplicable bouts of weeping. During one of
these spells, he closes his eyes and finds himself back in World War II. He
is marching with an ever-growing line of Americans making their way through
Luxembourg. They cross into Germany, being filmed by the Germans who want a
record of their great victory. Weary's feet are sore and bloody from
marching on the German boy's clogs. The Americans are sorted by rank, and a
colonel tries to talk with Billy. The colonel is dying; he tries to be
chummy with Billy. He has always wanted to be called "Wild Bob" by his men.
He dreams of having a reunion of his men in his hometown of Cody, Wyoming.
He invites Billy and the other men to come. Vonnegut mentions that he and
Bernard O'Hare were there when the colonel gave his invitation. All of the
POWs are put into train cars. The train does not leave for two days; during
that time Wild Bob dies. The boxcars are so crowded that to sleep the men
have to take turns lying down. When the train finally begins its trek
deeper into Germany, Billy jumps through time again. It is 1967, and he is
about to be kidnapped for the first time by the Trafalmadorians.
Chapter Four. Summary:
In 1967, on his daughter's wedding night, Billy cannot sleep. Because he is
unstuck in time, he knows that he will soon be kidnapped by a
Trafalmadorian flying saucer. He kills time unproductively in the meantime.
He watches a war movie, and because he is unstuck in time the movie goes
forward and then backward. He goes out to meet the ship, and he is taken as
planned. As the ship shoots out into space, Billy is jarred back to 1944.
In the boxcar, none of the men want Billy to sleep next to them because he
yells and thrashes in his sleep. He is forced to sleep while standing. In
another car, Weary dies of gangrene in his feet. As he slowly dies over the
course of days, he tells people again and again about the Three Musketeers.
He also asks that someone get revenge for him on the man who caused his
death. He blames Billy Pilgrim, of course.
The train finally arrives at a camp, and Billy and the other men are pushed
and prodded along. The camp is full of dying Russian POWs. At points,
Vonnegut likens the Russians' faces to radium dials. The Americans are all
given coats; Billy's is too small. They go into a delousing station, where
all of the men strip naked. Billy has one of the worst bodies there; he is
skinny and weak, and a German soldier comments on that fact. We are
introduced briefly to Edgar Derby and Paul Lazarro. Derby is the oldest POW
there, a man who pulled strings to get into the army. He is a high school
teacher from Indianapolis, and he is physically sturdy despite his forty-
four years of age. He will be shot after the Dresden bombing for trying to
steal a teapot. Paul Lazarro is a car thief from Illinois. His body is even weaker and
less healthy than Billy's. He was in Roland Weary's boxcar, and he vowed
solemnly to Weary that he would find and kill Billy Pilgrim. When the
scalding water turns on, Billy leaps back to his infancy. His mother has
just finished giving him a bath. He then leaps forward to a Sunday game of
golf, played with three other optometrists. Then, he leaps in time to the
space ship, on his first trip to Trafalmadore. He talks with one of his
captors about time, and he says that the Trafalmadorians sound like they do
not believe in free will. The alien replies that in all of the inhabited
planets of the galaxy, Earth is the only one whose people believe in the
concept of free will.
Chapter Five. Summary:
En route to Trafalmadore, Billy asks for something to read. The only human
novel is Valley of the Dolls, and when Billy asks for a Trafalmadorian
novel, he learns that the aliens' novels are slim, sleek volumes. Because
they have a different concept of time, Trafalmadorians have novels arranged
by juxtaposition of marvelous moments. The books have no cause or effect or
chronology; their beauty is in the arrangement of events meant to be read
simultaneously. Billy jumps in time to a visit to the Grand Canyon taken
when he was twelve years old. He is terrified of the canyon. His mother
touches him and he wets his pants. He jumps forward in time just ten days,
to later in the same vacation. He is visiting Carlsbad Caverns. The ranger
turns the lights off, so that the tourists can experience total darkness.
But Billy sees a light nearby: the radium dial of his father's watch.
Billy jumps back to the war. The Germans think Billy is one of the funniest
creatures they've seen in all of the war. His coat is preposterously small,
and on his already awkward body it looks ridiculous. The Americans give
their names and serial numbers so that they can be reported to the Red
Cross, and then they are marched to sheds occupied by middle-aged British
POWs. The British welcome them with singing. These British POWs are
officers, some of the first Brits taken prisoner in the war. They have been
prisoners for four years. Due to a clerical error early in the war, the Red
Cross shipped them an incredible surplus of food, which they have hoarded
cleverly. Consequently, they are some of the best-fed people in Europe.
Their German captors adore them.
To prepare for their American guests, the Brits have cleaned and set out
party favors. Candles and soap, supplied by the Germans, are plentiful: the
British do not know that these items are made from the bodies of Holocaust
victims. They have prepared a huge dinner and a dramatic adaptation of
Cinderella. Billy is so unhinged that his laughter at the performance
becomes hysterical shrieking, and he is taken to the hospital and doped up
on morphine. Edgar Derby watches over him, reading The Red Badge of
Courage. He leaps in time to the mental ward where he recovered in 1948.
In the mental ward, Billy's bed is next to the bed of Elliot Rosewater.
Like Billy, he has little love for life, in part because of things he saw
and did in the war. He is the man who introduces Billy to the science
fiction of Kilgore Trout. Billy is enduring one of his mother's dreaded
visits. She is a simple, religious woman. She makes Billy feel worse just
by being there. Billy leaps back in time to the POW camp. A British colonel
talks to Derby; after the newly arrived Americans shaved, the British were
shocked by how young they all were. Derby tells of how he was captured: the
Americans were pushed back into a forest, and the Germans rained shells on
them until they surrendered.
Billy leaps back to the hospital. He is being visited by his ugly,
overweight fiancée Valencia. He knew he was going crazy when he proposed to
her. He does not want to marry her. She is visiting now, eating a Three
Musketeers bar and wearing a diamond engagement ring that Billy found while
in Germany. Elliot tells her about The Gospel from Outer Space, a Kilgore
Trout book. Valencia tries to talk to Billy about plans for their wedding and
marriage, but he is not too involved. He leaps forward in time to the zoo
on Trafalmadore, where he was on display when he was forty-four years old.
The habitat is furnished with Sears and Roebuck furniture. He is naked. He
answers questions posed by the Trafalmadorian tourists. He learns that
there are five sexes among the Trafalmadorians, but the sex difference is
only visible in the fourth dimension. On earth there are actually seven
sexes, all necessary to the production of children; earthlings just do not
notice the sex difference between themselves because many of the sex acts
occur in the fourth dimension. These ideas baffle Billy, and they in turn
are baffled by his linear concept of time. Billy expects the
Trafalmadorians to be concerned about or horrified by the wars on earth. He
worries that earthlings will eventually threaten all the other races in the
galaxy, causing the eventual destruction of the universe. The
Trafalmadorians put their hands over their eyes, which lets Billy know that
he is being stupid.
The Trafalmadorians already know how the universe will end: during
experiments with a new fuel, one of their test pilots pushes a button and
the entire universe will disappear. They cannot prevent it. It has always
happened that way. Billy correctly concludes that trying to prevent wars on
Earth is futile. The Trafalmadorians also have wars, but they choose to
ignore them. They spend their time looking at the pleasant moments rather
than the unpleasant ones; they suggest that humans learn to do the same.
Billy leaps back in time to his wedding night. It is six months after his
release from the mental ward. The narrator reminds us that Valencia and her
father are very rich, and Billy will benefit greatly from his marriage to
her. After they have sex, Valencia tries to ask Billy questions about the
war. She wants a heroic war story, but Billy does not really respond to
her. He has a crazy thought about the war, which Vonnegut says would make a
good epitaph for Billy, and for the author, too: "Everything was beautiful,
and nothing hurt." He jumps in time to that night in the prison camp. Edgar
Derby has fallen asleep. Billy, doped up still from the morphine, wanders
out of the hospital shed. He snags himself on a barbed wire fence, and
cannot extract himself until a Russian helps him.
Billy never really says a word to the Russian. He wanders to the latrine,
where the Americans are sick from the feasting. A long period without food
followed by a feast almost always results in violent sickness. Among the
sick Americans is a soldier complaining that he has shit his brains out. It
is Vonnegut. Billy leaves, passing by three Englishmen who watch the
Americans' sickness with disgust. Billy jumps in time again, back to his
wedding night. He and his wife are cozy in bed. He jumps in time again, to
1944. It is before he left for Europe; he is riding the train from South
Carolina, where he was receiving his training, all the way back to Ilium
for his father's funeral.
We return to Billy's morphine night in the POW camp. Paul Lazarro is
carried into the hospital; while attempting to steal cigarettes from a
sleeping British officer, he was beaten up. The officer is the one carrying
him. Seeing now how puny Lazarro is, the officer feels guilty for hitting
him so hard. But he is disgusted by the American POWs. A German soldier who
adores the British officers comes in and apologizes for the inconvenience
of hosting the Americans. He assures the Brits in the room that the
Americans will soon be shipped off for forced labor in Dresden. The German
officer reads propaganda materials written by Howard Campbell, Jr., a
captured American who is now a Nazi. Campbell condemns the self-loathing of
the American poor, the inequalities of America's economic system, and the
miserable behavior of American POWs. Billy falls asleep and wakes up in
1968, where his daughter Barbara is scolding him. Barbara notices the house
is icy cold and goes to call the oil-burner man.
Billy leaps in time to the Trafalmadorian zoo, where Montana Wildhack, a
motion picture star, has been brought in to mate with him. Initially
unconscious, she wakes to find naked Billy and thousands of Trafalmadorians
outside their habitat. They're clapping. She screams. Eventually, though,
she comes to love and trust Billy. After a week they're sleeping together.
He travels in time back to his bed in 1968. The oil-burner man has fixed
the problem with the heater. Billy has just had a wet dream about Montana
Wildhack. The next day, he returns to work. His assistants are surprised to
see him, because they thought that he would never practice again. He has
the first patient sent in, a boy whose father died in Vietnam. Billy tries
to comfort the boy by telling him about the Trafalmadorian concept of time.
The boy's mother informs the receptionist that Billy is going crazy.
Barbara comes to take him home, sick with worry about what how to deal with
him.
Chapter Six. Summary:
Billy wakes after his morphine night in POW camp irresistibly drawn to two
tiny treasures. They draw him like magnets; they are hidden in the lining
of his coat. It will be revealed later on exactly what they are. He goes
back to sleep, and wakes up to the sounds of the British building a new
latrine. They have abandoned their old latrine and their meeting hall to
the Americans. The man who beat up Lazarro stops by to make sure he is all
right, and Lazarro promises that he is going to have the man killed after
the war. After the amused Brit leaves, Lazarro tells Derby and Billy that
revenge is life's sweetest pleasure. He once brutally tortured a dog that
bit him. He is going to have all of his enemies killed after the war. He
tells Billy that Weary was his buddy, and he is going to avenge him by
having Billy shot after the war. Because of his time hopping, Billy knows
that this is true. He will be shot in 1976. At that time, the United States
has split into twenty tiny nations. Billy will be lecturing in Chicago on
the Trafalmadorian concept of time and the fourth dimension. He tells the
spectators that he is about to die, and urges them to accept it. After the
lecture, he is shot in the head by a high-powered laser gun.
Back in the POW camp, Billy, Derby, and Lazarro go the theater to elect a
leader. On the way over, they see a Brit drawing a line in the dirt to
separate the American and British sections of the compound. In the theater,
Americans are sleeping anywhere that they can. A Brit lectures them on
hygiene, and Edgar Derby is elected leader. Only two or three men actually
have the energy to vote. Billy dresses himself in a piece of azure curtain
and Cinderella's boots. The Americans ride the train to Dresden. Dresden is
a beautiful city, appearing on the horizon like something out of a fairy
tale. They are met by eight German irregulars, boys and old men who will be
in charge of them for the rest of the war. They march through town towards
their new home. The people of Dresden watch them, and most of them are
amused by Billy's outlandish costume. One surgeon is not. He scolds Billy
about dignity and representing his country and war not being a joke, but
Billy is honestly perplexed by the man's anger. He shows the man his two
treasures from the lining of his coat: a two-carat diamond and some false
teeth. The Americans are brought to their new home, a converted building
originally for the slaughter of pigs. The building has a large 5 on it. The
POWs are taught the German name for their new home, in case they get lost
in the city. In English, it is called Slaughterhouse Five.
Chapter Seven. Summary:
Billy is on a plane next to his father-in-law. Billy and a number of
optometrists have chartered a plane to go to a convention in Montreal.
There's a barbershop quartet on board. Billy's father-in-law loves it when
they sing songs mocking the Polish. Vonnegut mentions that in Germany Billy
saw a Pole getting executed for having sex with a German girl. Billy leaps
in time to his wandering behind the German lines with the two scouts and
Roland Weary. He leaps in time again to the plane crash. Everyone dies but
him. The plane has crashed in Vermont, and Billy is found by Austrian ski
instructors. When he hears them speaking German, he thinks he's back in the
war. He is unconscious for days, and during that time he dreams about the
days right before the bombing.
He remembers a boy named Werner Gluck, one of the guards. He was good-
natured, as awkward and puny as Billy. One day, Gluck and Billy and Derby
were looking for the kitchen. Derby and Billy were pulling a two-wheeled
cart; it was their duty to bring dinner back for the boys. Gluck pulled a
door open, thinking the kitchen might be there, and instead revealed naked
teenage girls showering, refugees from another city that was bombed. The
women scream and Gluck shuts the door. When they finally find the kitchen,
an old cook talks with the trio critically and proclaims that all the real
soldiers are dead. Billy also remembers working in the malt syrup factory
in Dresden. The syrup is for pregnant women, and it is fortified with
vitamins. The POWs do everything they can to sneak spoonfuls of it. Billy
sneaks a spoonful to Edgar Derby, who is outside. He bursts into tears
after he tastes it.
Chapter Eight. Summary:
Howard Campbell, Jr., the American-turned-Nazi propagandist, visits the
captives of Slaughterhouse Five. He wears an elaborate costume of his own
design, a cross between cowboy outfit and a Nazi uniform. The POWs are
tired and unhealthy, undernourished and overworked. Campbell offers them
good eating if they join his Free American Corps. The Corps is Campbell's
idea. Composed of Americans fighting for the Germans, they will be sent to
fight on the Russian front. After the war, they will be repatriated through
Switzerland. Campbell reasons that the Americans will have to fight the
Soviet Union sooner or later, and they might as well get it out of the way.
Edgar Derby rises for his finest moment. He denounces Campbell soundly,
praises American forms of government, and speaks of the brotherhood between
Russians and Americans. Air raid sirens sound, and everyone takes cover in
a meat locker. The firebombing will not occur until tomorrow night; these
sirens are only a false alarm. Billy dozes, and then leaps in time to an
argument with his daughter Barbara. She is worrying about what should be
done about Billy. She tells him that she feels like she could kill Kilgore
Trout.
We move to Billy's first meeting with Trout, which happened in 1964. He is
out driving when he recognizes Trout from the jackets of his books. Trout's
books have never made money, so he works as a newspaper circulation man,
bullying and terrorizing newspaper delivery boys. One of Trout's boys
quits, and Billy offers to help Trout deliver the papers on the boy's
route. He gives Trout a ride. Trout is overwhelmed by meeting an avid fan.
He has only received one letter in the course of his career, and the letter
was crazed. It was written by none other than Billy's friend from the
mental ward, Elliot Rosewater. Billy invites Kilgore Trout to his
anniversary party.
At the party, Trout is obnoxious, but the optometrists and their spouses
are still enchanted by having an actual writer among them. A barbershop
quartet sings "That Old Gang of Mine," and Billy is visibly disturbed.
After giving Valencia her gift, he flees upstairs. Lying in bed, Billy
remembers the bombing of Dresden.
We see the events as Billy remembers them. He and the other POWs, along
with four of their guards, spend the night in the meat locker. The girls
from the shower were being killed in a shallower shelter nearby. The POWs
emerge at noon the next day into what looks like the surface of the moon.
The guards gape at the destruction. They look like a silent film of a
barbershop quartet.
We move to the Trafalmadorian Zoo. Montana Wildhack asked Billy to tell her
a story. He tells her about the burnt logs, actually corpses. He tells her
about the great monuments and buildings of the city turned into a flat,
lunar surface.
We move to Dresden. Without food or water, the POWs have to march to find
some if they are to survive. They make their way across the treacherous
landscape, much of it still hot, bits of crumbling. They are attacked by
American fighter planes. The end up in the suburbs, at an inn that has
prepared to receive any survivors. The innkeeper lets the Americans sleep
in the stable. He provides them with food and drink, and goes out to bid
them goodnight as they go to bed.
Chapter Nine. Summary:
When Billy is in the hospital in Vermont, Valencia goes crazy with grief.
Driving to the hospital, she gets in a terrible accident. She gears up her
car and continues driving to the hospital, determined to get there even
though she leaves her exhaust system behind. She pulls into the hospital
driveway and falls unconscious from carbon monoxide poisoning. An hour
later, she is dead.
Billy is oblivious, unconscious in his bed, dreaming and time traveling. In
the bed next to him is Bertram Copeland Ruumford, an arrogant retired
Brigadier General in the Air Force Reserve. He is a seventy-year-old
Harvard professor and the official historian of the Air Force, and he is in
superb physical condition. He has a twenty-three year-old high school
dropout with an IQ of 103. He is an arrogant jingoist. Currently he is
working on a history of the Air Corp in World War II. He has to write a
section on the success of the Dresden bombing. Ruumfoord's wife Lily is
scared of Billy, who mumbles deliriously. Ruumfoord is disgusted by him,
because all he does in his sleep in quit or surrender.
Barbara comes to visit Billy. She is in a horrible state, drugged up so she
can function after the recent tragedies. Billy cannot hear her. He is
remembering an eye exam he gave to a retarded boy a decade ago. Then he
leaps in time when he was sixteen years old. In the waiting room of a
doctor's office, he sees an old man troubled by horrible gas. Billy opens
his eyes and he is back in the hospital in Vermont. His son Robert, a
decorated Green Beret, is there. Billy closes his eyes again.
He misses Valencia's funeral because he is till too sick. People assume
that he is a vegetable, but actually he is thinking actively about
Trafalmadorians and the lectures he will deliver about time and the
permanence of moments. Overhearing Ruumford talk about Dresden, Billy
finally speaks up and tells Ruumford that he was at Dresden. Ruumford
ignores him, trying to convince himself and the doctors that Billy has
Echonalia, a condition where the sufferer simply repeats what he hears.
Billy leaps in time to May of 1945, two days after the end of the war in
Europe. In a coffin-shaped green wagon, Billy and five other Americans ride
with loot from the suburbs of Dresden. They found the wagon, attached to
two horses, and have been using it to carry things that they have taken.
The homes have been abandoned because the Russians are coming, and the
Americans have been looting. When they go to the slaughterhouse and the
other five Americans loot among the ruins, Billy naps in the wagon. He has
a cavalry pistol and a Luftwaffe ceremonial saber. He wakes; two Germans, a
husband-and-wife pair of obstetricians, are angry about how the Americans
have treated the horses. The horses' hooves are shattered, their mouths are
bleeding from the bits, and they are extremely thirsty. Billy goes around
to look at the horses, and he bursts into tears. It is the only time he
cries in the whole war. Vonnegut reminds the reader of the epigraph at the
start of the book, an excerpt from a Christmas carol that describes the
baby Jesus as not crying. Billy cries very little.
He leaps in time back to the hospital in Vermont, where Ruumford is finally
questioning Billy about Dresden. Barbara takes Billy home later that day.
Billy is watched by a nurse; he is supposed to be under observation, but he
escapes to New York City and gets a hotel room. He plans to tell the world
about the Trafalmadorians and their concept of time. The next day, Billy
goes into a bookstore that sells pornography, peep shows, and Kilgore Trout
novels. Billy is only interested in Kilgore Trout novels. In one of the
pornographic magazines, there is an article about the disappearance of porn
star Montana Wildhack. Later, Billy sneaks onto a radio talk show by posing
as a literary critic. The critics take turns discussing the novel, but when
Billy gets his turn he talks about Trafalmadore. At the next commercial
break, he is made to leave. When he goes back to his hotel room and lies
down, he travels back in time to Trafalmadore. Montana is nursing their
child. She wears a locket with a picture of her mother and the same prayer
that Billy had on his office wall in Ilium.
Chapter Ten. Summary:
Vonnegut tells us that Robert Kennedy died last night. Martin Luther King,
Jr., was assassinated a month ago. Body counts are reported every night on
the news as signs that the war in Vietnam is being won. Vonnegut's father
died years ago of natural causes. He left Billy all of his guns, which
rust. Billy claims that on Trafalmadore the aliens are more interested in
Darwin than Jesus. Darwin, says Vonnegut, taught that death was the means
to progress. Vonnegut recalls the pleasant trip he made to Dresden with his
old war buddy, O'Hare. They were looking up facts about Dresden in a little
book when O'Hare came across a passage on the exploding world population.
By 2000, the book predicts, the world will have a population of 7 billion
people. Vonnegut says that he supposes they will all want dignity.
Billy Pilgrim travels back in time to 1945, two days after the bombing of
Dresden. German authorities find the POWs in the innkeeper's stable. Along
with other POWs, they are brought back to Dresden to dig for bodies. Bodies
are trapped in protected pockets under the rubble, and the POWs are put to
work bringing them up. But after one of the workers is lowered into a
pocket and dies of the dry heaves, the Germans settle on incinerating the
bodies instead of retrieving them. During this time, Edgar Derby is caught
with a teapot he took from the ruins. He is tried and executed by a firing
squad.
Then the POWs were returned to the stable. The German soldiers went off to
fight the Soviets. Spring comes, and one day in May the war is over. Billy
and the other men go outside into the abandoned suburbs. They find a horse-
drawn wagon, the wagon green and shaped like a coffin. The birds sing, "Po-
tee-weet?"
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