Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut is a satirical, anti-war novel about Billy Pilgrim, a World War II soldier who becomes “unstuck in time”. Billy nonlinearly experiences his life, including surviving the 1945 firebombing of Dresden, becoming a wealthy optometrist, and being kidnapped by aliens (Tralfamadorians). The novel uses these disjointed, fatalistic experiences to critique the horrors of war and the nature of trauma, frequently repeating “So it goes” when discussing death.
SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE
OR THE CHILDREN'S
CRUSADE
A Duty-dance with Death
KURT VONNEGUT, JR.
[NAL Release #21]
[15 jan 2001 – OCR errors removed – v1]
A fourth-generation German-American
now living in easy circumstances
on Cape Cod
[and smoking too much],
who, as an American infantry scout
hors de combat,
as a prisoner of war,
witnessed the fire-bombing of Dresden, Germany,
'The Florence of the Elbe,'
a long time ago,
and survived to tell the tale.
This is a novel
somewhat in the telegraphic schizophrenic
manner of tales
of the planet Tralfamadore,
where the flying saucers
come from.
Peace.
One
All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true. One guy I
knew really was shot in Dresden for taking a teapot that wasn't his. Another guy I knew
really did threaten to have his personal enemies killed by hired gunmen after the war.
And so on. I've changed all the names.
I really did go back to Dresden with Guggenheim money (God love it) in 1967. It
looked a lot like Dayton, Ohio, more open spaces than Dayton has. There must be tons of
human bone meal in the ground.
I went back there with an old war buddy, Bernard V. O'Hare, and we made friends
with a taxi driver, who took us to the slaughterhouse where we had been locked up at
night as prisoner of war. His name was Gerhard Müller. He told us that he was a prisoner
of the Americans for a while. We asked him how it was to live under Communism, and
he said that it was terrible at first, because everybody had to work so hard, and because
there wasn't much shelter or food or clothing. But things were much better now. He had a
pleasant little apartment, and his daughter was getting an excellent education. His mother
was incinerated in the Dresden fire-storm. So it goes.
He sent O'Hare a postcard at Christmastime, and here is what it said:
'I wish you and your family also as to your friend Merry Christmas and a happy New
Year and I hope that we'll meet again in a world of peace and freedom in the taxi cab if
the accident will.'
I like that very much: 'If the accident will.'
I would hate to tell you what this lousy little book cost me in money and anxiety and
time. When I got home from the Second World War twenty-three years ago, I thought it
would be easy for me to write about the destruction of Dresden, since all I would have to
do would be to report what I had seen. And I thought, too, that it would be a masterpiece
or at least make me a lot of money, since the subject was so big.
But not many words about Dresden came from my mind then-not enough of them to
make a book, anyway. And not many words come now, either, when I have become an
old fart with his memories and his Pall Malls, with his sons full grown. I think of how
useless the Dresden-part of my memory has been, and yet how tempting Dresden has
been to write about, and I am reminded of the famous limerick:
There was a young man from Stamboul,
Who soliloquized thus to his tool,
'You took all my wealth
And you ruined my health,
And now you won't pee, you old fool’
And I'm reminded, too, of the song that goes
My name is Yon Yonson,
I work in Wisconsin,
I work in a lumbermill there.
The people I meet when I walk down the street,
They say, 'What's your name?
And I say,
‘My name is Yon Yonson,
I work in Wisconsin...
And so on to infinity.
Over the years, people I've met have often asked me what I'm working on, and I've
usually replied that the main thing was a book about Dresden.
I said that to Harrison Starr, the movie-maker, one time, and he raised his eyebrows
and inquired, 'Is it an anti-war book?'
'Yes,' I said. 'I guess.'
'You know what I say to people when I hear they're writing anti-war books?'
'No. What do you say, Harrison Starr?'
'I say, "Why don't you write an anti-glacier book instead?"'
What he meant, of course, was that there would always be wars, that they were as easy
to stop as glaciers. I believe that too.
And, even if wars didn't keep coming like glaciers, there would still be plain old death.
When I was somewhat younger, working on my famous Dresden book, I asked an old
war buddy named Bernard V. O'Hare if I could come to see him. He was a district
attorney in Pennsylvania. I was a writer on Cape Cod. We had been privates in the war,
infantry scouts. We had never expected to make any money after the war, but we were
doing quite well.
I had the Bell Telephone Company find him for me. They are wonderful that way. I
have this, disease late at night sometimes, involving alcohol and the telephone. I get
drunk, and I drive my wife away with a breath like mustard gas and roses. And then,
speaking gravely and elegantly into the telephone, I ask the telephone operators to
connect me with this friend or that one, from whom I have not heard in years.
I got O'Hare on the line in this way. He is short and I am tall. We were Mutt and Jeff in
the war. We were captured together in the war. I told him who I was on the telephone. He
had no trouble believing it. He was up. He was reading. Everybody else in his house was
asleep.
'Listen,' I said, 'I'm writing this book about Dresden. I'd like some help remembering
stuff. I wonder if I could come down and see you, and we could drink and talk and
remember.'
He was unenthusiastic. He said he couldn't remember much. He told me, though, to
come ahead.
'I think the climax of the book will be the execution of poor old Edgar Derby,' I said.
'The irony is so great. A whole city gets burned down, and thousands and thousands of
people are killed. And then this one American foot soldier is arrested in the ruins for
taking a teapot. And he's given a regular trial, and then he's shot by a firing squad.'
'Um,' said O'Hare.
'Don't you think that's really where the climax should come?' 'I don't know anything
about it,' he said. 'That's your trade, not mine.'
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