A Book Report on Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

1. Major Characters of the Novel
a. Billy Pilgrim is the person that the book is written around. We follow him, perhaps not in a straight order, from his youth joining the military to his abduction on the alien planet of Tralmalfadore, to his older age at his 1960s home in Illum. It is his experiences and journeys that we follow, and his actions we read about. However, Billy had a specific lack of character for a main one. He is not heroic, he has very little personality traits, let alone an immersive and complex character. Most of the story is written around his experiences that seem more like symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder from his World War Two days, combined with hallucinations after a brain injury in a near-fatal plane crash. His personality is greatly impacted by his lack of belief in free-will, supported by the theme.
b. The Tralmalfadorians a plunger-like aliens that capture Billy and put him in an alien zoo for a period of time. They have a different perception of time than humans, one that has no free-will. They believe everyone is always existing. Everyone lives throughout a pre-determined, fixed timeline. They teach these ideals to Billy, which develop his character and become the premise for his actions, or lack thereof throughout the story. This ideal eliminates several things; responsibility for actions because everything god or bad is predetermined, concept of death because everyone is always existing, and choices because you have no control. This gives Billy a way to avoid the feelings he experiences with the large amount of loss and negativity in his live. He can write off any emotion as a pre-determined “meant to be” existence that he did not, does not, and will never have any control over. So it g...

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...as shivering. Her tail between her legs. She had been borrowed that morning from a farmer. She had never been to war before. She had no idea what game was being played. Her name was Princess.” (Vonnegut-52) Princess and Billy are both in similar situations. Both were unwillingly drafted into the war, and had no say in the greater picture, the master plan playing out above their heads. This depicts how neither of them had any decision in what happened to them, the opposite of free will. “Among things Billy could not change were the past, present, and future.” (Vonnegut-60) This once again reaffirms the theme. A subject to fate, Billy has no control over events in the past, present, or future. It should be noted however, that taken literally this can also refer to Billy being a fictional character in a written story, therefore being subject to the author’s narrative.