Slaughterhouse-Five Study Guide

Narrator

Intrusive and recurring as a minor character, the narrator seems anonymous while also clearly identifying himself when he, the narrator, says: "That was I. That was me. That was the author of this book." As noted above, as a soldier, Vonnegut was captured by Germans at the Battle of the Bulge and transported to Dresden. He and fellow prisoners survived the bombing while being held in a deep cellar of Schlachthof Fünf (Slaughterhouse 5). The narrator begins the story describing his connection to the fire-bombing of Dresden and his reasons for writing Slaughterhouse-Five .

Billy Pilgrim

A fatalistic optometrist ensconced in a dull, safe, marriage in Ilium, New York. During World War II, he was held as a prisoner of war in Dresden, surviving the firebombing, experiences which had a lasting effect on his post-war life. His time travel occurs at desperate times in his life; he re-lives events past and future and becomes fatalistic (though not a defeatist) because he has seen when, how and why he will die.

Roland Weary

A weak man dreaming of grandeur and obsessed with gore and vengeance, who saves Billy several times (despite Billy's protests) in hopes of military glory. Weary gets them captured, leading to the loss of his winter uniforms and boots. Weary dies of gangrene in the train en route to the POW camp and blames Billy in his dying words.

Paul Lazzaro

Another POW. A sickly, ill-tempered car thief from Cicero, Illinois, who takes Weary's dying words as a revenge commission to kill Billy. He keeps a mental list of his enemies, claiming he can have anyone "killed for a thousand dollars plus traveling expenses".

Kilgore Trout

A failed science fiction writer who makes money by managing newspaper delivery boys and has received only one fan letter (from Eliot Rosewater; see below). After Billy meets him in a back alley in Ilium, New York, he invites Trout to his wedding anniversary celebration. There, Kilgore follows Billy, thinking the latter has seen through a "time window". Kilgore Trout is also a main character in Vonnegut's novel Breakfast of Champions.

Edgar Derby

A middle-aged man who has pulled strings to be able to fight in the war. He was a high school teacher who felt that he needed to participate rather than just sending off his students. Though relatively unimportant, he seems to be the only American before the bombing of Dresden to understand what war can do to people. German forces summarily execute him for looting. Vonnegut has said that this death is the climax of the book as a whole.

Howard W. Campbell, Jr.

An American Nazi. Before the war, he lived in Germany where he was a noted German-language playwright and Nazi propagandist. In an essay, he connects the misery of American poverty, to the disheveled appearance and behaviour of the American POWs. Edgar Derby confronts him when Campbell tries to recruit American POWs into the American Free Corps to fight the Communist Soviet Union on behalf of the Nazis. Campbell is the protagonist of an earlier Vonnegut novel, Mother Night. The Americans never reveal Campbell's true role with the OSS in postwar years, forcing him to lead a life of anonymity to avoid disgrace. Eventually, Campbell surrenders himself to Israeli authorities and hangs himself while in their custody, after learning that he will be released and not be prosecuted for war crimes.

Valencia Merble

Billy's wife and mother of their children, Robert and Barbara. Billy is emotionally distant from her. She dies from carbon monoxide poisoning, after an automobile accident en route to the hospital, to see Billy after his airplane crash.

Robert Pilgrim

Son of Billy and Valencia. A troubled, middle-class boy and disappointing son who so absorbs the anti-Communist world view that he metamorphoses from suburban adolescent rebel to Green Beret sergeant.

Barbara Pilgrim

Daughter of Billy and Valencia. She is a "bitchy flibbertigibbet," from having had to assume the family's leadership at the age of twenty. She has "legs like an Edwardian grand piano," marries an optometrist, and treats her widower father as a childish invalid.

Tralfamadorians

The extraterrestrial race who appear (to humans) like upright toilet plungers with a hand atop, in which is set a green eye. They abduct Billy and teach him about time's relation to the world (as a fourth dimension), fate and death's nature. The Tralfamadorians are featured in several Vonnegut novels. In Slaughterhouse Five, they reveal that the universe will be accidentally destroyed by one of their test pilots.

Montana Wildhack

A model who stars in a film showing in a pornographic book store when Billy stops in to look at the Kilgore Trout novels sitting in the window. She is featured on the covers of magazines sold in the store. Abducted and placed with Billy on Tralfamadore, she has sex with him and they have a child.

"Wild Bob"

A superannuated army officer Billy met in the war. He dies of pneumonia. He tells his fellow POWs to call him "Wild Bob", as he thinks they're the 451st Infantry Regiment and under his command. His "If you're ever in Cody, Wyoming, ask for Wild Bob," is a phrase that Billy repeats to himself. He was based on William Joseph Cody Garlow (grandson of the famed Buffalo Bill Cody), who surrendered his unit to the German forces during the Battle of the Bulge.

Eliot Rosewater

Billy befriends him in the veterans' hospital; he introduces Billy to the sci fi novels of Kilgore Trout. Rosewater wrote the only fan letter Trout ever received. Rosewater had also suffered a terrible event during the war. They find the Trout novels help them deal with the trauma. Rosewater is a character featured in other books by Kurt Vonnegut, such as God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater.

Bertram Copeland Rumfoord

A Harvard history professor, retired Air Force brigadier general and millionaire, who shares a hospital room with Billy and is interested in the Dresden bombing. He is likely a relative of Winston Niles Rumfoord, a character in Vonnegut's earlier novel, The Sirens of Titan.

The Scouts

Two American infantry scouts trapped behind German lines who found Roland Weary and Billy. Roland refers to him and the scouts as the "Three Musketeers." The scouts abandon Roland and Billy because the latter are slowing them down. They are revealed to have been shot and killed by Germans in ambush.

Mary O'Hare

The character briefly discussed in the beginning of the book, to whom Vonnegut promised to name the book The Children's Crusade. She is the wife of Bernard V. O'Hare.

Bernard V. O'Hare

The husband of Mary O'Hare. He is the narrator's old war friend who was also held in Dresden and accompanies him to that city after the war.

Werner Gluck

The sixteen-year-old German charged with guarding Billy and Edgar Derby, when they are first placed at Slaughterhouse Five in Dresden. He does not know his way around and accidentally leads Billy and Edgar into a communal shower where some German refugee girls from the Eastern Front are bathing. He is described as appearing similar to Billy. They are revealed by the narrator as distant cousins but never discover this fact in the novel.