Slaughterhouse-Five (Magill’s Guide to Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature)
At a glance:
- Author: Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
- First Published: 1969
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Science fiction—cautionary
- Time of Work: 1922-1976
- Setting: Ilium, New York; Dresden, Germany; and the planet Tralfamadore
- 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
The Plot
Slaughterhouse-Five: Or, The Children’s Crusade, A Duty-Dance with Death is a framed narrative in which Kurt Vonnegut himself appears in the first and last chapters, explaining how and why he wrote the novel. He also pops up occasionally in the action itself, because he was—like his protagonist Billy Pilgrim, as he tells readers in the frame chapters—a prisoner of war in Dresden, Germany, when Allied bombers incinerated the city on February 13, 1945.
The novel proper opens in 1944, when Billy, a chaplain’s assistant and inept foot soldier, is...
[The entire page is 1217 words long]
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