It also shows the irony of how the weak and decrepit Billy survives the journey while the heroic Roland Weary dies.
Many people do not even make it to the camp alive. It was successful in its mission, killing over 135,000 people (Bloom 95). Dresden has absolutely no military importance, but the allies choose to bomb it to kill as many German citizens possible. Vonnegut chooses World War II and Dresden to show war’s horrors. This allows the reader to read about Billy in World War II and then see how the war affects him at later parts in his life. Slaughterhouse-Five does not only take place during World War II, but rather it takes place all throughout Billy’s life.
The setting of Slaughterhouse-Five is important in showing the destructiveness of war. (Bloom 102) Over 30 years pass since the end of World War II however, Paul still assassinates Billy.Īccording to SparkNotes, these characters can be described through this statement, “the mass mortality of war results from large-scale ignorance and stupidity coupled with an unrelenting, shameless sense of pride.”(SparkNotes) Even though the characters of Slaughterhouse-Five show the psychological side of the destructives of war, the setting shows the physical damage of war. Paul represents how long war affects people and how they can never really escape their experiences. Roland Weary eventually dies on the POW train, and his friend Paul Lazzaro proclaims that one day he will kill Billy to avenge Roland’s death. Roland saves Billy because he tries to be heroic in war, but there is nothing heroic about war. Billy is also saved by a young soldier named Roland Weary. The characters that Billy meets during World War II also show the destructiveness of war. Rumfoord represents the attitude of how people think war is heroic and glorifying when it is really just destructive and horrifying (SparkNotes). While Billy is in the hospital after his plane crash, he meets a man named Bertram Copeland Rumfoord who does not believe that Billy was actually present for the Dresden air bombing. Robert, turning his life around by going to war, shows Vonnegut’s acceptance of the inevitability of war (SparkNotes).īilly’s daughter, Barbara, shows how the generation after World War II is still affected, because her development is constantly affected by her father’s war trauma and delusions (SparkNotes). This greatly affects Billy’s son, Robert, who is a delinquent and failure, who later turns his life around and becomes a Green Beret in Vietnam. Billy also has two children, which he has trouble communicating with because of his war torn mind. Billy is well off in life and has many material comforts, but they still do not give him comfort from the horrors he experienced in war (Bloom 102).
Billy eventually gets married and becomes an optometrist. It is in this time traveling that one sees how war has affected his future. And from his state of shock and exhaustion, Billy becomes unstuck in time traveling through all the events in his life. The irony of this is how he survives while thousands of other more well equipped soldiers die (SparkNotes). Billy is then pushed into war with very little preparation, with no weapons, and wearing only a toga with a small coat.
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