Slaughterhouse 5 Plot Summary
A disoriented and ill-trained American soldier named Billy Pilgrim is captured by German soldiers during the Battle of the Bulge. Trained as a Chaplain's assistant, he arrives in Belgium just as his unit is overwhelmed by the Germans. There is not enough time to issue him with combat gear. He and other prisoners are sent far from the front to live in a makeshift prison, a disused slaughterhouse in the city of Dresden. During air raids the prisoners and their guards take shelter in a deep cellar, originally built to keep meat cool. Because of this shelter they are among the few survivors of the firestorm which consumes the city after an air raid.
Billy has become "unstuck in time" for unexplained reasons (though it's hinted towards the end that his surviving a plane crash left him with mild brain damage). He meets, and is later kidnapped by, aliens from the planet Tralfamadore, who exhibit him in a Tralfamadorian zoo with Montana Wildhack, a pornographic movie star. The Tralfamadorians see in four dimensions, the fourth dimension being time. Tralfamadorians have seen every instant of their lives already; they believe that they can't choose to change anything about their fate, but can choose to focus on any moment in their lives that they wish.
Throughout the novel, Billy hops back and forth in time, reliving various occasions in his life and fantasy life; this gives him a constant sense of stage fright, as he never knows what part of his life is coming up next. He spends time on Tralfamadore; in Dresden; numbly wading through deep snow in WWII Germany before his capture; living married in America after the war; up to the moment of his murder on Earth many years later. By the time of his murder, Billy has adopted Tralfamadorian fatalism, which has given him great personal peace; he has spread this philosophy to millions of humans and has become a popular public figure on Earth.
Billy's fatalism appears to be grounded in...
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