Chapter Summaries
Chapter One
-Kurt Vonnegut claims that most of this story is true.
-In 1967, Vonnegut and his old war friend, Bernard V. O'Hare, visit Dresden.
-They ask their taxi driver, Gerhard Müller, how he feels about life under communism.
-Vonnegut has had great trouble writing about Dresden for the past twenty-three years since the event. He also has trouble creating an outline for his novel; his best one was created on wallpaper with crayons.
-After the war, Vonnegut studied anthropology at the University of Chicago. He also worked as a police reporter and public relations person.
-He is disturbed by the world's ignorance towards the Dresden firebombing.
-Around 1964, Vonnegut, his daughter, and his daughter's friend all visit Bernard V. O'Hare.
-Bernard's wife is disgusted by Vonnegut; she thinks his book will display soldiers as heroes, rather than as "babies."
-Vonnegut promises to title his book "The Children's Crusade" and says he won't glorify the war.
-Vonnegut lands a contract so that he may write three books; this is the first one.
-As he heads to Dresden, Vonnegut stays in a hotel and reads the Bible as his perception of time is confused.
-He considers his book to be a failure and decides not to reflect on it further.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Chapter Two
-The narrator introduces Billy Pilgrim.
-Billy Pilgrim uncontrollably travels to different moments of his life.
-He was born in Ilium, New York in 1922 and appeared weak and odd.
-He trained to be an optometrist until he was drafted into the military.
-After his time in Germany, Billy is treated for a mental breakdown. After he recovers, he starts a family.
-Billy survives a plane crash in 1968. As Billy heals, his wife dies unexpectedly.
-Billy appears on a New York City radio show and describes how aliens abducted him in 1967.
-His daughter, Barbara, worries for his mental health and brings him back to his home.
-Billy writes to his local newspaper about the aliens.
-Billy starts a second letter, describing the planet Tralfamadore, hoping to explain the "true nature of time."
-Billy recounts his time with three other American soldiers after the Battle of the Bulge.
-One soldier, Roland Weary, saves Billy many times.
-Billy eventually falls behind the others and struggles to continue.
-He sees the "light" of his death and birth. He then remembers almost drowning as a small boy in a swimming pool.
-He travels to 1965. He is visiting his mother in a nursing home.
-It is then 1958, and he is at his son's Little League banquet.
-Then it is 1961; he is cheating on his wife at a party.
-He wakes up behind enemy lines with Roland Weary.
-Two of the four men ditch Billy and Roland. Roland is particularly upset by this because people have ditched him throughout his life. Roland blames Billy for ending "The Three Musketeers."
-It is 1957, and Billy giving a speech as the newly-elected president of the Ilium Lions Club.
-He and Roland are being captured by Germans.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Chapter Three
-Billy and Roland have been captured by a group of German soldiers.
-Roland must give his boots to a "beautiful" German soldier and is given wooden clogs to wear.
-Billy and Roland are taken to a house that has been filled with other American captives.
-Billy awakens in 1967 and is performing an eye exam; he has gotten into the habit of falling asleep at work.
-Billy is a prisoner again; he and many other prisoners of war march.
-Billy is photographed while "being captured."
-It is 1967, and Billy is driving through a ghetto on his way to a lunch event; the destruction of the area reminds him of Dresden.
-At the lunch event, Billy is reminded of a plaque he has in his office.
-Billy returns to his house to sleep but begins to cry instead.
-He is in Luxembourg, and the wind is making his eyes water; Roland cries because the wooden clogs he was given hurt his feet.
-The prisoners arrive in Germany and are led to a railroad yard.
-A colonel who wishes to be known as "Wild Bob" asks if the prisoners are his men.
-The men are sorted by rank into individual boxcars; it takes two days for the train to begin moving.
-It is the night of the Tralfamadorians' capture of Billy.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Chapter Four
-Billy's daughter has had her wedding, and Billy has trouble sleeping; he is expecting to be abducted by the Tralfamadorians.
-He goes downstairs and watches a documentary on Americans in World War II. The movie is played backward and displays the war as if people were ending their fighting and harm of others.
-In his backyard, Billy is taken by a flying saucer that makes a sound like that an owl makes.
-When Billy asks why he specifically was captured, a Tralfamadorian compares this occurrence to a bug's capture in amber; there was no "why," it just happened that way.
-Billy is put to sleep as the saucer accelerates.
-He is in a boxcar headed through Germany, wishing he could sleep. Nobody will let him sleep near them because he isn't a sound sleeper.
-Roland Weary has died. Before Roland's death, he told everyone that Billy caused his death and expressed his wish to have his life avenged. A car thief promises to get Roland's revenge on Billy.
-After ten nights, the train arrives at a prison camp.
-The prisoners are all taken to a large shower area and are cleaned.
-Billy is an infant with his mother whom has just bathed him.
-Billy is an optometrist playing golf with his friends.
-He is on the flying saucer and asks how he got there. He is told that he is there because time was structured that way.
-According to a Tralfamadorian, "only on Earth is there any talk of free will."
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Chapter Five
-While on Tralfamadore, Billy learns about Tralfamadorian books. Their books are made up of clumps of symbols that represent single moments.
-Billy remembers his trip with his family to the American West.
-While in the German prison camp, Billy and the other prisoners have their clothes deloused.
-The Americans live with English officers and are greeted with a banquet.
-While watching a performance of "Cinderella," Billy starts laughing uncontrollably; he is taken to the prison camp's hospital.
-It is 1948, and he is in New York in a veteran hospital's mental ward.
-The man in the bed next to his, Eliot Rosewater, introduces Billy to the works of the science-fiction writer Kilgore Trout.
-In Germany, Edgar Derby watches over Billy.
-In his zoo-like dome on Tralfamadore, Billy learns that the Tralfamadorians go to war sometimes. They are also aware of how their world and the universe ends.
-Billy travels back to his wedding night with Valencia.
-Billy is back at the prison camp where the men are all sick.
-At the prison camp, a German major reads writings on negative opinions of American soldiers.
-In 1968, Billy's daughter scolds him for writing his bizarre letter to the newspaper.
-On Tralfamadore, actress Montana Wildhack appears.
-In 1968, Billy tells a patient about Tralfamadorian concepts; the boy's mother claims Billy is crazy.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Chapter Six
-Billy wakes up the day he is to go to Dresden.
-He senses "animal magnetism" coming from two lumps inside his overcoat.
-Billy is with Edgar Derby and Paul Lazzaro. Lazzaro discusses how the sweetest thing in life is revenge. He tells Billy he will avenge Roland's death.
-Shortly after announcing his expected death to a baseball park filled with people, an assassin kills him with a laser gun.
-Edgar Derby is named as the leader. The men are then sent to Dresden.
-Eight German soldiers lead the one hundred American prisoners to a slaughterhouse.
-Dresden looks untouched by war.
-Billy's clown-like appearance offends a man observing the parade of soldiers.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Chapter Seven
-Billy is on a plane with other optometrists and his father-in-law. They are headed for a conference.
-A barbershop quartet on the plane sings to those on-board.
-It is 1944, and Billy is telling The Three Musketeers to go on without him.
-Billy is on the plane, and it crashes on Sugarbush Mountain. Everyone dies but the co-pilot and Billy, who has a fractured skull.
-Billy is experiencing his first night in Slaughterhouse Five with Edgar Derby and a German guard named Werner Gluck.
-In a factory, Billy and other prisoners of war illegally taste the manufactured malt syrup. Spoons are hidden by those who try it and have to hide the evidence. Billy and Edgar try the syrup.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Chapter Eight
-An American Nazi propagandist, Howard W Campbell Jr, tries to convince the prisoners of the slaughterhouse to join his Free American Corps and fight the Russians.
-Billy is fighting with his daughter who claims Kilgore Trout's books have convinced him of Tralfamadore’s existence.
-Kilgore Trout comes to Billy's wedding anniversary.
-The optometrist barbershop quartet sings at the party, and Billy feels the need to leave the room.
-After Dresden was bombed, the remaining four guards who remained with the American prisoners reminded Billy of a barbershop quartet from a silent film.
-On Tralfamadore, Montana Wildhack is six months pregnant and asks Billy for a story. He tells her about the remaining prisoners/guards traveling to an inn and staying for the night.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Chapter Nine
-Valencia drives to the hospital fearing for her husband. She gets in an accident on the way there that leads to her dying of carbon monoxide poisoning.
-Bertram Copeland Rumfoord, a history professor, lies in the bed next to Billy's.
-Bertram is writing a book on certain aspects of World War II.
-Many are convinced the now-conscious Billy has been left a vegetable because of the accident.
-In Dresden, a German couple discusses the poor shape of two wagon-pulling horses. The two Germans make Billy look at the horses, and he cries for the first time since the war started.
-In the hospital, Bertram asks Billy about Dresden.
-Barbara, Billy's daughter, takes him back to his house. He sneaks past the live-in nurse to New York City. He wishes to share what he knows about Tralfamadore.
-He enters a bookstore that is selling a few Kilgore Trout novels. He also notices a magazine that features Montana Wildhack.
-Billy enters a radio station pretending to be a writer for the Ilium Gazette. He begins describing Tralfamadore on air but is escorted to the street shortly after.
-On Tralfamadore, Montana tells Billy she knows he has been time-traveling.
-Her silver locket is inscribed with the same words as the plaque in Billy's optometry office.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Chapter Ten
-Tralfamadorians are more interested in Charles Darwin than Jesus Christ.
-Vonnegut does not like the Tralfamadorians' idea of eternal existence, though he is happy for all of his life's pleasant experiences.
-While Vonnegut was with O'Hare on a plane, O'Hare showed him a book that claimed that the population would reach seven billion by 2000.
-Vonnegut responded by saying, "I supposed they will all want dignity."
-Billy is in Dresden and is working with the other prisoners to excavate the ruins of the city. Soldiers use flamethrowers to cremate the discovered bodies.
-Edgar Derby is arrested and shot for taking a teapot that was found in the ruins.
-It is spring when the war ends. A bird says to Billy, "Poo-tee-weet?"
-Kurt Vonnegut claims that most of this story is true.
-In 1967, Vonnegut and his old war friend, Bernard V. O'Hare, visit Dresden.
-They ask their taxi driver, Gerhard Müller, how he feels about life under communism.
-Vonnegut has had great trouble writing about Dresden for the past twenty-three years since the event. He also has trouble creating an outline for his novel; his best one was created on wallpaper with crayons.
-After the war, Vonnegut studied anthropology at the University of Chicago. He also worked as a police reporter and public relations person.
-He is disturbed by the world's ignorance towards the Dresden firebombing.
-Around 1964, Vonnegut, his daughter, and his daughter's friend all visit Bernard V. O'Hare.
-Bernard's wife is disgusted by Vonnegut; she thinks his book will display soldiers as heroes, rather than as "babies."
-Vonnegut promises to title his book "The Children's Crusade" and says he won't glorify the war.
-Vonnegut lands a contract so that he may write three books; this is the first one.
-As he heads to Dresden, Vonnegut stays in a hotel and reads the Bible as his perception of time is confused.
-He considers his book to be a failure and decides not to reflect on it further.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Chapter Two
-The narrator introduces Billy Pilgrim.
-Billy Pilgrim uncontrollably travels to different moments of his life.
-He was born in Ilium, New York in 1922 and appeared weak and odd.
-He trained to be an optometrist until he was drafted into the military.
-After his time in Germany, Billy is treated for a mental breakdown. After he recovers, he starts a family.
-Billy survives a plane crash in 1968. As Billy heals, his wife dies unexpectedly.
-Billy appears on a New York City radio show and describes how aliens abducted him in 1967.
-His daughter, Barbara, worries for his mental health and brings him back to his home.
-Billy writes to his local newspaper about the aliens.
-Billy starts a second letter, describing the planet Tralfamadore, hoping to explain the "true nature of time."
-Billy recounts his time with three other American soldiers after the Battle of the Bulge.
-One soldier, Roland Weary, saves Billy many times.
-Billy eventually falls behind the others and struggles to continue.
-He sees the "light" of his death and birth. He then remembers almost drowning as a small boy in a swimming pool.
-He travels to 1965. He is visiting his mother in a nursing home.
-It is then 1958, and he is at his son's Little League banquet.
-Then it is 1961; he is cheating on his wife at a party.
-He wakes up behind enemy lines with Roland Weary.
-Two of the four men ditch Billy and Roland. Roland is particularly upset by this because people have ditched him throughout his life. Roland blames Billy for ending "The Three Musketeers."
-It is 1957, and Billy giving a speech as the newly-elected president of the Ilium Lions Club.
-He and Roland are being captured by Germans.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Chapter Three
-Billy and Roland have been captured by a group of German soldiers.
-Roland must give his boots to a "beautiful" German soldier and is given wooden clogs to wear.
-Billy and Roland are taken to a house that has been filled with other American captives.
-Billy awakens in 1967 and is performing an eye exam; he has gotten into the habit of falling asleep at work.
-Billy is a prisoner again; he and many other prisoners of war march.
-Billy is photographed while "being captured."
-It is 1967, and Billy is driving through a ghetto on his way to a lunch event; the destruction of the area reminds him of Dresden.
-At the lunch event, Billy is reminded of a plaque he has in his office.
-Billy returns to his house to sleep but begins to cry instead.
-He is in Luxembourg, and the wind is making his eyes water; Roland cries because the wooden clogs he was given hurt his feet.
-The prisoners arrive in Germany and are led to a railroad yard.
-A colonel who wishes to be known as "Wild Bob" asks if the prisoners are his men.
-The men are sorted by rank into individual boxcars; it takes two days for the train to begin moving.
-It is the night of the Tralfamadorians' capture of Billy.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Chapter Four
-Billy's daughter has had her wedding, and Billy has trouble sleeping; he is expecting to be abducted by the Tralfamadorians.
-He goes downstairs and watches a documentary on Americans in World War II. The movie is played backward and displays the war as if people were ending their fighting and harm of others.
-In his backyard, Billy is taken by a flying saucer that makes a sound like that an owl makes.
-When Billy asks why he specifically was captured, a Tralfamadorian compares this occurrence to a bug's capture in amber; there was no "why," it just happened that way.
-Billy is put to sleep as the saucer accelerates.
-He is in a boxcar headed through Germany, wishing he could sleep. Nobody will let him sleep near them because he isn't a sound sleeper.
-Roland Weary has died. Before Roland's death, he told everyone that Billy caused his death and expressed his wish to have his life avenged. A car thief promises to get Roland's revenge on Billy.
-After ten nights, the train arrives at a prison camp.
-The prisoners are all taken to a large shower area and are cleaned.
-Billy is an infant with his mother whom has just bathed him.
-Billy is an optometrist playing golf with his friends.
-He is on the flying saucer and asks how he got there. He is told that he is there because time was structured that way.
-According to a Tralfamadorian, "only on Earth is there any talk of free will."
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Chapter Five
-While on Tralfamadore, Billy learns about Tralfamadorian books. Their books are made up of clumps of symbols that represent single moments.
-Billy remembers his trip with his family to the American West.
-While in the German prison camp, Billy and the other prisoners have their clothes deloused.
-The Americans live with English officers and are greeted with a banquet.
-While watching a performance of "Cinderella," Billy starts laughing uncontrollably; he is taken to the prison camp's hospital.
-It is 1948, and he is in New York in a veteran hospital's mental ward.
-The man in the bed next to his, Eliot Rosewater, introduces Billy to the works of the science-fiction writer Kilgore Trout.
-In Germany, Edgar Derby watches over Billy.
-In his zoo-like dome on Tralfamadore, Billy learns that the Tralfamadorians go to war sometimes. They are also aware of how their world and the universe ends.
-Billy travels back to his wedding night with Valencia.
-Billy is back at the prison camp where the men are all sick.
-At the prison camp, a German major reads writings on negative opinions of American soldiers.
-In 1968, Billy's daughter scolds him for writing his bizarre letter to the newspaper.
-On Tralfamadore, actress Montana Wildhack appears.
-In 1968, Billy tells a patient about Tralfamadorian concepts; the boy's mother claims Billy is crazy.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Chapter Six
-Billy wakes up the day he is to go to Dresden.
-He senses "animal magnetism" coming from two lumps inside his overcoat.
-Billy is with Edgar Derby and Paul Lazzaro. Lazzaro discusses how the sweetest thing in life is revenge. He tells Billy he will avenge Roland's death.
-Shortly after announcing his expected death to a baseball park filled with people, an assassin kills him with a laser gun.
-Edgar Derby is named as the leader. The men are then sent to Dresden.
-Eight German soldiers lead the one hundred American prisoners to a slaughterhouse.
-Dresden looks untouched by war.
-Billy's clown-like appearance offends a man observing the parade of soldiers.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Chapter Seven
-Billy is on a plane with other optometrists and his father-in-law. They are headed for a conference.
-A barbershop quartet on the plane sings to those on-board.
-It is 1944, and Billy is telling The Three Musketeers to go on without him.
-Billy is on the plane, and it crashes on Sugarbush Mountain. Everyone dies but the co-pilot and Billy, who has a fractured skull.
-Billy is experiencing his first night in Slaughterhouse Five with Edgar Derby and a German guard named Werner Gluck.
-In a factory, Billy and other prisoners of war illegally taste the manufactured malt syrup. Spoons are hidden by those who try it and have to hide the evidence. Billy and Edgar try the syrup.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Chapter Eight
-An American Nazi propagandist, Howard W Campbell Jr, tries to convince the prisoners of the slaughterhouse to join his Free American Corps and fight the Russians.
-Billy is fighting with his daughter who claims Kilgore Trout's books have convinced him of Tralfamadore’s existence.
-Kilgore Trout comes to Billy's wedding anniversary.
-The optometrist barbershop quartet sings at the party, and Billy feels the need to leave the room.
-After Dresden was bombed, the remaining four guards who remained with the American prisoners reminded Billy of a barbershop quartet from a silent film.
-On Tralfamadore, Montana Wildhack is six months pregnant and asks Billy for a story. He tells her about the remaining prisoners/guards traveling to an inn and staying for the night.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Chapter Nine
-Valencia drives to the hospital fearing for her husband. She gets in an accident on the way there that leads to her dying of carbon monoxide poisoning.
-Bertram Copeland Rumfoord, a history professor, lies in the bed next to Billy's.
-Bertram is writing a book on certain aspects of World War II.
-Many are convinced the now-conscious Billy has been left a vegetable because of the accident.
-In Dresden, a German couple discusses the poor shape of two wagon-pulling horses. The two Germans make Billy look at the horses, and he cries for the first time since the war started.
-In the hospital, Bertram asks Billy about Dresden.
-Barbara, Billy's daughter, takes him back to his house. He sneaks past the live-in nurse to New York City. He wishes to share what he knows about Tralfamadore.
-He enters a bookstore that is selling a few Kilgore Trout novels. He also notices a magazine that features Montana Wildhack.
-Billy enters a radio station pretending to be a writer for the Ilium Gazette. He begins describing Tralfamadore on air but is escorted to the street shortly after.
-On Tralfamadore, Montana tells Billy she knows he has been time-traveling.
-Her silver locket is inscribed with the same words as the plaque in Billy's optometry office.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Chapter Ten
-Tralfamadorians are more interested in Charles Darwin than Jesus Christ.
-Vonnegut does not like the Tralfamadorians' idea of eternal existence, though he is happy for all of his life's pleasant experiences.
-While Vonnegut was with O'Hare on a plane, O'Hare showed him a book that claimed that the population would reach seven billion by 2000.
-Vonnegut responded by saying, "I supposed they will all want dignity."
-Billy is in Dresden and is working with the other prisoners to excavate the ruins of the city. Soldiers use flamethrowers to cremate the discovered bodies.
-Edgar Derby is arrested and shot for taking a teapot that was found in the ruins.
-It is spring when the war ends. A bird says to Billy, "Poo-tee-weet?"