Slaughterhouse-Five

Billy recovers from the plane crash in a hospital in Vermont. As Valencia drives to meet him, her anxieties lead to a car accident. The accident breaks the muffler on her car, but she ignores the issue and keeps driving to Canada. Valencia arrives at the hospital, switches off the ignition to the car, and is then knocked unconscious by carbon monoxide poisoning. She dies an hour later in her car. Billy is unaware of her death because he is also unconscious.

A retired military man named Bertram Copeland Rumfoord shares the hospital room with Billy. Rumfoord is now a military historian at Harvard University. He is 70-years-old and married to his fifth wife, Lily, who is 23. Rumfoord is working on a book about World War II, and Lily brings him research which includes a book about Dresden. The forewords in the book concede that the bombing was a tragic event but refuse to state that the people who ordered the bombing were evil. The writers suggest that the Dresden firebombing was just a natural, terrible part of war.

Billy jumps through time. First, he goes to his office in 1958 and examines a patient. Then he travels to a day when he was 16 and waiting to see a doctor for an infection in his thumb. Billy is then back in the hospital in Vermont. His son Robert visits, his chest covered in medals won in the Vietnam War. Billy reflects on his son Robert’s outstanding military record compared to Robert’s difficulties at school. He closes his eyes and does not respond to Robert’s presence. Robert presumes his father is unconscious. Rumfoord talks to Lily about Dresden. The bombing was kept secret for so long that there are very few resources or history books which discuss it in any detail. Billy stirs from his apparent unconsciousness to tell Rumfoord that he was in Dresden on the night of the bombing. The historian dismisses Billy’s stories as a byproduct of a mental health disorder. He does not believe Billy.

Billy travels back to 1945. World War II ends in Europe so Billy and five other men are allowed to return to the slaughterhouse in Dresden to collect any souvenirs they might want. The other men search the camp while Billy sleeps in the back of a horse-drawn wagon. A passing German couple notices the impoverished state of the horses and blames Billy for their condition. Billy is still dressed in his silver boots and his strange robes made from curtains. He cannot understand the German couple until they switch to English. They accuse him of abusing the horses. Billy notices the horse’s suffering for the first time and cries. Until this point, he has been unable to weep about any of the atrocities he witnessed in the war.

In the hospital in Vermont, Rumfoord slowly develops an interest in Billy’s stories. When Billy is released from the hospital, Barbara takes him home. She places him in his bed and forbids him from leaving the house for work or anything else.

A nurse is hired to help Billy and keep watch over him. He sneaks out and drives to New York in a desperate attempt to get on television and tell the world about his experiences on Tralfamadore. Billy checks into a hotel in New York and then discovers a bookstore near Times Square. The back of the store is dedicated to pornography. For 25 cents, he can watch a pornographic film. He views a film starring Montana Wildhack and the woman from the photo with the Shetland pony. Tucked away amid the pornographic books are four novels by Kilgore Trout. Though unable to make an appearance on television, Billy books a slot on a radio show alongside a group of literary critics. When Billy’s turn to speak comes, he describes Tralfamadore, spaceships, and his experiences with Montana Wildhack. The radio host waits for the commercial break then gently ejects Billy from the studio. He returns to his hotel room where he falls asleep and jumps through time to Tralfamadore. He describes his experience in New York to Montana as she lays in the bed beside him. Montana listens and interprets the story based on the teachings of the Tralfamadorians.