Slaughter-house five

the life of billy pilgrim...

Plane crashes in Vermont

In slaughter house five one of the main themes is the destructiveness of war. This is not just the physical but also the mental tole that it takes on the soldiers

-Fire bombing in Dresden

only billy and co-pilot survive

-discharged from the military

Billy's childhood

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-Grand canyon

-Swimming pool

Billy's Birth

1944

1968

1948

1945

1930

1970

July 1922

DRAFTED

Abducted by aliens

Captured by Germans

commits himself to a mental ward

sent to Luxemburg

TRALFAMADORIAN TIME CONCEPTS

the tralfamadorian people see everything in a time line where they see how everything ever was and everything ever will be. This concept makes it easy for people to not see death as a big deal because every living thing is alive in every moment that it has lived even after it has died. They know that there will be bad times in their lives, and they know when the world will end. They dont try to change anything cause they know they cant so they just try to live in all of the moments that are good instead.

Our way of seeing vs. Tralfamadorian.

His Past

In his youth Billy had shown signs of having very little will to live.

When Billy's father threw him into the water as a child to teach him how to swim he had said that he wanted to stay at the bottom of the pool because he thought it was peaceful and resented whoever had pulled them out when they realized he wasnt going to come back up.

"So it goes"

Billy's lack of connection with life and his lack of a need to survive made him an ideal person to be taught the talfamadorian way of life.

This phrase is used to Equalize all death in the novel whether it is thousands of people dying in a bombing or just the champagne bubbles dying in the bottle.

Quotes:

"while billy was recuperating in the hospital in Vermont, his wife died accidentally of carbon monoxide poisoning. So it goes" (25)

"and the whole universe disappears. So it goes." (117)

it doesn't matter whether the death is personal like his wife or father dying, or something as catastrophic as the whole universe being destroyed, everything is just "SO IT GOES" and billy moves on.

Billy Pilgrim

VIDEO ON OTHER TAB!

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/an-fIYs7Yn4h777/slaughterhouse_five_1972_wild_bob/

Billy is kind of a interesting narrator for the story. His weakness and unwillingness to live make him more accepting of the tralfamadorian way of thinking an their concepts of time, and someones life and death.

Mental Destructiveness

Physical Destructiveness

The mental tole that the war takes on billy is pretty extreme.

The time travel first starts to effect billy when he is with "the Three Musketeers" after he is separated from his group. He starts to check out of his present situation.

The bombing in Dresden is a really good example of how destructive that the war was. Billy compares the beautiful architecture to the city of Oz and then after the bombing everything was ash and debris and everyone that had lived in that town was dead, all that was left was the birds.

Vonnegut also mentions that the people who hate the war the most are the ones that had been there are seen all those terrible things. Everybody who went over to the war saw terrible things and it had changed them forever, and destroyed a few like billy had been.

The Planet of Tralfamador

Surviving the War

-The atmosphere is made of cyinide

-They have a zoo that they keep the narrator Billy Pilgrim in.

-They will eventually destroy the universe while testing a new form of rocket fuel.

Billy is not only mentally ill equipped to be in a war, he is also a sad looking creature that doesn't have the proper supplies, and eventually ends up wandering around western europe wearing a pink curtain as a toga, and silver boots he took from the stage of the Cinderella show that the british people put on for him and the other soldiers.

Destructiveness of War

Welcome to TRALFAMADOR!!

The Tralfamadorian people

They see in the 4th demension which is time.

When we look up at the night sky we just see the dots of light. This alien race sees many streaming lights because they see alll the paths that the star has ever traveled all at once.

They don't take life or death too seriousl because they know that even once a person is dead they are actually alive in all the moments that they had lived in their life.

These strange creatures do not speak but talk to eachother telepathically.

Their books are just a bunch of random amazing events which all seen together at once make up an amazing story.

Poo-tee-Weet

No words can really describe the after effects of the war. Poo- tee- weet seems about as good as anything else to be said after super a catastrophic disaster.

Importance of characters

Derby

It is almost asking a question at the end of the novel that really has no answer as to how any of this could have happened.

Vonnegut says that Derby is the only real character in the war because their isn't any characters in war just people trying to survive and following orders.

When Derby did step up to Campbell he says that he will get his later which was foreshadowing to when Derby is killed for stealing a tea pot.

Vonnegut wants us to know that although Derby seemed like a hero in the story that heros don't survive in war. The people who survived are those people like Billy who slink around like cowards.

Billy's son

Billy talks about how his son was a hooligan who got into trouble a lot, but that the Green Berets straightened him out and turned him into a good citizen.

Billy obviously did not have a very high opinion on his son and the fact that the military turned him into such a great soldier was Vonnegut's way of saying that the people in the military were simple minded people like his son.

this is the sound that the birds make in the novel. He says that no one was suppose to survive anything like the bombing of Dresden other than the birds.

The Birds represent the absolute stupidity of the war. When everything is destroyed after the bombing all that is left is the birds, and who really won from all that loss of life?

Barbara Pilgrim

Adding Barbara to the story adds important insight to why Billy is the way that he is.

She suggests that Billy's encounters with aliens is from the accident and that it could be caused by him never fully recovering.

This makes you think that maybe Billy was never a very reliable narrator and that what he is talking about it actually about something else all together.

What the Aliens taught Him

Because the Tralfamadorians had a very obscure way of viewing life and death, they also thought it very odd that humans believed in freewill.

The Tralfamadorians say that if we can not change anything about time, there is no such thing as free will. They tell Billy that the whole idea of free will is unique to earthlings.

Billy uses this knowledge to deal with the realities of death and pain. If us human beings have to suffer, at least there is nothing we can do about it.

Illusion of Free will

Free will:

Drafted into the War

After the Crash

Teach a kid to Swim

The ability to act at one's own discretion. Freedom of choice.

Billy gets drafted into the war without ever wanting to join the military. He is then a sad excuse for a soldier because he was forced into the army.

When Billy was a young boy, his father threw him into the deep end of a swimming pool to teach him how to swim. Billy didn't want to learn how to swim but he had no choice.

The fact that Billy survived the war shows that nothing he did would have changed it. There was a reason he got drafted against his will and there's a reason he survived.

When he was thrown in, he decided to just float there at the bottom of the pool. Ready to die until someone rescued him. He resented him for saving him because thats not what he wanted.

Before the accident Billy had never mentioned these alien encounters to his family. His daughter who had already had to deal with her mother death and billy's accident at the same time refused to believe Billy and tried to keep him (unsuccessfully) from telling people about his encounters and making their family look bad. He writes in papers about it, and even somehow gets on TV about it. He supposedly also dies at a conference talking about it in the 1970s during a time jump.

Satire

Slaughter house five is satirical and uses humor, aliens, and disorganization to point out the absurdities of war.

Link: http://www.anyclip.com/movies/slaughterhouse-five/welcome-from-the-british/#%21quotes/

when the Brittish troops greeted the Americans they threw a feast for them and put on a show with glittery props, and gifts for the american soldiers. Vonnegut would put in a light hearted scene like that then remind you that surrounds those soldiers on all sides were starving Russians, and the soap and candles the americans were given were actually made from the fat of dead jews.

Introduction

War times

Billy was a soldier in WWII. He has always been a weak man, who was never fit to be a soldier. He wandered around western Europe, ill equipped and a burden to everyone surrounding him. he survived through this experience some how, even through the bombing of dresden a traumatic fire bombing that killed more people in Germany than the atomic bombs in Japan.

What it means;

- Billy pilgrim a 40 year old optometrist who suffered from a traumatic plane crash that killed all of his colleagues but himself, travels between periods of his life, and tells the story of his encounter with a race of aliens called the Tralfamadorians.

Blue and Ivory represents the Fragility between life and death.

And the difference between the worldly and other worldly.

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Blue and Ivory

ANY QUESTIONS?

Aliens

Billy claims to possess the ability to jump between periods of his life. one moment he is in a prison camp surrounded by dying Russians the next hes a baby in his mothers arms or in a zoo on the planet of tralfmador. The tralfmadorian people see in a third dimension, which is time, so they see life as a time line, of everything that ever was and ever will be, all at once. He adopts the saying "so it goes" from them, an expression used when someone dies, when he was abducted by them and brought to live in a zoo with an actress named Montana Wildhack.

How its used:

Blue and Ivory is mentions both when Billy watched the dead men being carried off and all you could see was their blue and ivory feet sticking out from under the blankets. Later he mentions how his feet were those same colors when he walked down to where he would be taken by the aliens.

Him trying to tell people about Tralfamadore:

"And then, without any warning, Billy went to New York City, and got on an all-night radio program devoted to talk. He told about having come unstuck in time. He said, too, that he had been kidnapped by a flying saucer in 1967. The saucer was from the planet Tralfamordore, he said. He was taken to Tralfamadore, where he was displayed naked in a zoo, he said. He was mated there with a former Earthling movie star named Montana Wildhack." (Vonnegut 25).

Importance of Sight

Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, sight plays an important role as shown by the main character being an optometrist, who literally changes the way people see. He also tries to change the way people see time and death, by telling the public about the Tralfamadorians, who see time in the fourth dimension.

Please note that much like the book which switches time, and setting very quickly this presentation may not make sense at first, but by the end you should have a better understanding of both the novel and Vonnegut's view on war.

As an optometrist:

"Billy traveled in time, opened his eyes, found himself staring into the glass eyes of a jade green mechanical owl. The owl was hanging upside down from a rod of stainless steel. The owl was Billy's optometer in his office in Illium."

thank you for your patience, let the journey begin.

Slaughter-house Five

Emma Burke, Sarah Davies, Savannah Whorff, Trevor Cox, Lily Olson