Slaughterhouse-Five

An American Nazi named Howard W. Campbell Junior visits the American prisoners two days before Dresden is bombed. He has written extensive propaganda about American prisoners in Germany for the Nazis and now wants to recruit men for a new German military organization named the Free American Corps. American prisoners can sign up to the unit and fight for Germany against the Russians. Campbell wears a ridiculous outfit with a ten-gallon hat, a striped body stocking, and an armband with a blue swastika. Prisoners who sign up for his military unit will receive steak and potatoes and be sent back to America, once they defeat the Russians. While the American prisoners are quiet when they hear Campbell’s offer, Edgar stands up and accuses Campbell of being worse than a bloodsucking tick. Edgar bursts into an inspiring speech about freedom and justice, explaining that there is a brotherhood between the Americans and the Russians. The two countries will unite to defeat the “disease of Nazism” (85), he says.

Everyone scatters when the air raid sirens sound. The American prisoners huddle in a meat locker underneath their quarters. No bombs fall on Dresden that night, though the men remain in their bunker just in case. Billy sleeps and time jumps to America in the future, where he meets the science fiction writer Kilgore Trout. Both of them live in the town of Ilium, where Trout works for a local newspaper. He is not a journalist; he organizes the delivery boys who take the newspapers to each house. Billy offers to help with the deliveries and invites Trout to his wedding anniversary with Valencia.

Billy and Valencia celebrate 25 years of marriage. The rude barbershop quartet sing at their party. The songs make Billy feel distressed and remind him of the doomed flight he will board in the future. His distress makes the other guests worry. They think he is having a heart attack. When Trout asks Billy about time travel, Billy denies any knowledge of it. Another song from the barbershop quartet forces him to leave the room. He goes upstairs and thinks about his years of being dislodged in time. He remembers the first night of bombing in Dresden.

Billy and the other American prisoners huddle in their meat locker. They feel the explosions of the bombs above them. They exit the meat locker the next day and see a sky filled with thick black smoke. There are no plants or buildings left. The destroyed city looks like the surface of the moon. The prisoners and four guards are the only people left alive in the prison camp, and most of the Dresden townspeople are dead.

Billy travels forward in time. He is in the zoo on Tralfamadore where he lays in bed with Montana. She is six-months pregnant with his child. When she asks him to tell her a story, all he can talk about is Dresden. He describes being marched by the guards through the destroyed prison camp. The burned out shell of the old slaughterhouse makes the men realize the extent of the destruction. They have no food, no water, and no shelter. The prisoners and the guards leave the camp and move through the destroyed city. American planes fly overhead and spray the men with machine gun fire, but no one is hit. The men walk through Dresden until nighttime. They reach a suburb which has survived intact. An inn run by a German family welcomes the men in and gives them food. The four German guards are allowed to sleep in the house, but the hundred Americans are told to sleep in the stable.