Slaughterhouse Five

Slaughterhouse Five -


is the story of Billy Pilgrim, a decidedly non-heroic man who has become "unstuck in time." He travels back and forth in time, visiting his birth, death, all the moments in between repeatedly and out of order. The novel is framed by Chapters One and Ten, in which Vonnegut himself talks about the difficulties of writing the novel and the effects of Dresden on his own life. In between, Billy Pilgrim's life is given to us out of order and in small fragments. For the sake of clarity, this short summary will put Billy's life in chronological order, although in the novel every chapter spans events over the course of many years.
Billy is born in 1922 in Ilium, New York. He grows into a weak and awkward young man, studying briefly at the Ilium School of Optometry briefly before he is drafted. After minimal training, he sent to Europe right in the middle of the Battle of the Bulge. He is captured behind German lines; before his capture is the first time he gets unstuck in time.
Billy and the other American POWs are temporarily shipped to a camp full of dying Russians and a few pampered British officers. The Americans then are moved to Dresden, a beautiful German city that has no major industries and no significant military presence. No one expects Dresden to be bombed. But in the span of one night in February of 1945, Dresden is bombed until almost nothing is left. 130,000 people die. Billy and the other POWs wait out the bombing in a meat cellar. The next day at noon, the come out and find a landscape that looks like the surface of the moon. With no food or water, the POWs and four guards trek out to the suburbs.