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

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