Slaughterhouse-Five (Cyclopedia of Literary Characters)
At a glance:
- Author: Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
- First Published: 1969
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Science fiction
- Time of Work: 1922-1976
- Setting: Dresden, Germany, and Ilium, New York
- Genres: Long fiction, Psychological fiction, Science fiction
- Subjects: 1950’s, 1960’s, 1970’s, New York, North America or North Americans, Northeast, U.S., United States or Americans, Twentieth century, Other worlds, 1940’s, World War II, 1920’s, 1930’s, Time travel, Bombs, Prophecy or prophets, Germany or German people, Time, Aliens, space
- Locales: Ilium, NY, Cape Cod, MA, Dresden, Germany
Characters Discussed
Billy Pilgrim, a conservative, middle- aged optometrist living in upstate Ilium, New York. Born in 1922, Pilgrim leads a very bland life, except for the facts that at the end of World War II he came “unstuck in time” and began to jump back and forth among past, present, and future, and that in 1967 he was captured by a flying saucer from the planet Tralfamadore. The novel’s jerky structure mirrors his interplanetary and time travel. Pilgrim is thus a schizophrenic character: An apathetic, almost autistic widower in the present, he is also a crackpot...
[The entire page is 773 words long]
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