CHARACTERS
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Billy Pilgrim (BP): Protagonist, WWII veteran, POW survivor, and
successful optometrist living a less than ordinary life
Narrator (Kurt Vonnegut): the novel’s author and a minor character,
POW during the firebombing of Dresden
Bernhard V. O’Hare/ Mary O’Hare: wartime pal of Vonnegut/ his wife,
upset that Vonnegut’s novel will glorify war
Roland Weary: Soldier taken by the Germans like Pilgrim, gloryseeking, part of the Three Musketeers
SYMBOLS/ MOTIFS
“Poo-tee-weet”: shows the lack of
anything intelligent to say about
war
“So It Goes”: follows every death in the
novel, points out the inevitability of death
Narrator as a character: more intimate
connection between the novel and the
reader
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PLOT
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Told in nonlinear order
BP suffers from PTSD, believes
that aliens called Tralfamadorians
kidnapped him, the aliens teach
him their perception of time where
no one dies indefinitely
It’s not about officers or heroes but
privates and prisoners of war, men
who have been deprived of any
kind of control over where they go
and what they do and don’t want to
be and shouldn’t be on the
battlefield
SETTINGS
Germany during WWII
- Illium, fictional town in NY
Tralfamadore, fictional planet
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THEMES
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Destructiveness of War, being an
anti-war book, war is described
with no filter
Fate and Free Will, BP learns
that since you cannot change
time, there is no free will
KEY QUOTES
Kurt Vonnegut: “Do you know what I say to people when I hear they’re writing
anti-war books?… I say, ‘Why don’t you write an anti-glacier book instead?’”
Similar to BP trying to survive when he has no control over his own life, the
narrator questions how he should write a book against a seemingly constant
concept such as war.
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‘Why me?’ "That is a very Earthling question to ask, Mr. Pilgrim. Why you?
Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is. Have
you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?” ‘Yes.' …”Well, here we are, Mr.
Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why.”
The tralfamaadorian’s lesson about time is that life happens and there is nothing
that you can do to change it.
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