war. She wants a heroic war story, but Billy does not really respond to
her. He has a crazy thought about the war, which Vonnegut says would make a
good epitaph for Billy, and for the author, too: "Everything was beautiful,
and nothing hurt." He jumps in time to that night in the prison camp. Edgar
Derby has fallen asleep. Billy, doped up still from the morphine, wanders
out of the hospital shed. He snags himself on a barbed wire fence, and
cannot extract himself until a Russian helps him.
Billy never really says a word to the Russian. He wanders to the latrine,
where the Americans are sick from the feasting. A long period without food
followed by a feast almost always results in violent sickness. Among the
sick Americans is a soldier complaining that he has shit his brains out. It
is Vonnegut. Billy leaves, passing by three Englishmen who watch the
Americans' sickness with disgust. Billy jumps in time again, back to his
wedding night. He and his wife are cozy in bed. He jumps in time again, to
1944. It is before he left for Europe; he is riding the train from South
Carolina, where he was receiving his training, all the way back to Ilium
for his father's funeral.
We return to Billy's morphine night in the POW camp. Paul Lazarro is
carried into the hospital; while attempting to steal cigarettes from a
sleeping British officer, he was beaten up. The officer is the one carrying
him. Seeing now how puny Lazarro is, the officer feels guilty for hitting
him so hard. But he is disgusted by the American POWs. A German soldier who
adores the British officers comes in and apologizes for the inconvenience
of hosting the Americans. He assures the Brits in the room that the
Americans will soon be shipped off for forced labor in Dresden. The German
officer reads propaganda materials written by Howard Campbell, Jr., a
captured American who is now a Nazi. Campbell condemns the self-loathing of
the American poor, the inequalities of America's economic system, and the
miserable behavior of American POWs. Billy falls asleep and wakes up in
1968, where his daughter Barbara is scolding him. Barbara notices the house
is icy cold and goes to call the oil-burner man.
Billy leaps in time to the Trafalmadorian zoo, where Montana Wildhack, a
motion picture star, has been brought in to mate with him. Initially
unconscious, she wakes to find naked Billy and thousands of Trafalmadorians
outside their habitat. They're clapping. She screams. Eventually, though,
she comes to love and trust Billy. After a week they're sleeping together.
He travels in time back to his bed in 1968. The oil-burner man has fixed
the problem with the heater. Billy has just had a wet dream about Montana
Wildhack. The next day, he returns to work. His assistants are surprised to
see him, because they thought that he would never practice again. He has
the first patient sent in, a boy whose father died in Vietnam. Billy tries
to comfort the boy by telling him about the Trafalmadorian concept of time.
The boy's mother informs the receptionist that Billy is going crazy.
Barbara comes to take him home, sick with worry about what how to deal with
him.
Chapter Six. Summary:
Billy wakes after his morphine night in POW camp irresistibly drawn to two
tiny treasures. They draw him like magnets; they are hidden in the lining
of his coat. It will be revealed later on exactly what they are. He goes
back to sleep, and wakes up to the sounds of the British building a new
latrine. They have abandoned their old latrine and their meeting hall to
the Americans. The man who beat up Lazarro stops by to make sure he is all
right, and Lazarro promises that he is going to have the man killed after
the war. After the amused Brit leaves, Lazarro tells Derby and Billy that
revenge is life's sweetest pleasure. He once brutally tortured a dog that
bit him. He is going to have all of his enemies killed after the war. He
tells Billy that Weary was his buddy, and he is going to avenge him by
having Billy shot after the war. Because of his time hopping, Billy knows
that this is true. He will be shot in 1976. At that time, the United States
has split into twenty tiny nations. Billy will be lecturing in Chicago on
the Trafalmadorian concept of time and the fourth dimension. He tells the
spectators that he is about to die, and urges them to accept it. After the
lecture, he is shot in the head by a high-powered laser gun.
Back in the POW camp, Billy, Derby, and Lazarro go the theater to elect a
leader. On the way over, they see a Brit drawing a line in the dirt to
separate the American and British sections of the compound. In the theater,
Americans are sleeping anywhere that they can. A Brit lectures them on
hygiene, and Edgar Derby is elected leader. Only two or three men actually
have the energy to vote. Billy dresses himself in a piece of azure curtain
and Cinderella's boots. The Americans ride the train to Dresden. Dresden is
a beautiful city, appearing on the horizon like something out of a fairy
tale. They are met by eight German irregulars, boys and old men who will be
in charge of them for the rest of the war. They march through town towards
their new home. The people of Dresden watch them, and most of them are
amused by Billy's outlandish costume. One surgeon is not. He scolds Billy
about dignity and representing his country and war not being a joke, but
Billy is honestly perplexed by the man's anger. He shows the man his two
treasures from the lining of his coat: a two-carat diamond and some false
teeth. The Americans are brought to their new home, a converted building
originally for the slaughter of pigs. The building has a large 5 on it. The
POWs are taught the German name for their new home, in case they get lost
in the city. In English, it is called Slaughterhouse Five.
Chapter Seven. Summary:
Billy is on a plane next to his father-in-law. Billy and a number of
optometrists have chartered a plane to go to a convention in Montreal.
There's a barbershop quartet on board. Billy's father-in-law loves it when
they sing songs mocking the Polish. Vonnegut mentions that in Germany Billy
saw a Pole getting executed for having sex with a German girl. Billy leaps
in time to his wandering behind the German lines with the two scouts and
Roland Weary. He leaps in time again to the plane crash. Everyone dies but
him. The plane has crashed in Vermont, and Billy is found by Austrian ski
instructors. When he hears them speaking German, he thinks he's back in the
war. He is unconscious for days, and during that time he dreams about the
days right before the bombing.
He remembers a boy named Werner Gluck, one of the guards. He was good-
natured, as awkward and puny as Billy. One day, Gluck and Billy and Derby
were looking for the kitchen. Derby and Billy were pulling a two-wheeled
cart; it was their duty to bring dinner back for the boys. Gluck pulled a
door open, thinking the kitchen might be there, and instead revealed naked
teenage girls showering, refugees from another city that was bombed. The
women scream and Gluck shuts the door. When they finally find the kitchen,
an old cook talks with the trio critically and proclaims that all the real
soldiers are dead. Billy also remembers working in the malt syrup factory
in Dresden. The syrup is for pregnant women, and it is fortified with
vitamins. The POWs do everything they can to sneak spoonfuls of it. Billy
sneaks a spoonful to Edgar Derby, who is outside. He bursts into tears
after he tastes it.
Chapter Eight. Summary:
Howard Campbell, Jr., the American-turned-Nazi propagandist, visits the
captives of Slaughterhouse Five. He wears an elaborate costume of his own
design, a cross between cowboy outfit and a Nazi uniform. The POWs are
tired and unhealthy, undernourished and overworked. Campbell offers them
good eating if they join his Free American Corps. The Corps is Campbell's
idea. Composed of Americans fighting for the Germans, they will be sent to
fight on the Russian front. After the war, they will be repatriated through
Switzerland. Campbell reasons that the Americans will have to fight the
Soviet Union sooner or later, and they might as well get it out of the way.
Edgar Derby rises for his finest moment. He denounces Campbell soundly,
praises American forms of government, and speaks of the brotherhood between
Russians and Americans. Air raid sirens sound, and everyone takes cover in
a meat locker. The firebombing will not occur until tomorrow night; these
sirens are only a false alarm. Billy dozes, and then leaps in time to an
argument with his daughter Barbara. She is worrying about what should be
done about Billy. She tells him that she feels like she could kill Kilgore
Trout.
We move to Billy's first meeting with Trout, which happened in 1964. He is
out driving when he recognizes Trout from the jackets of his books. Trout's
books have never made money, so he works as a newspaper circulation man,
bullying and terrorizing newspaper delivery boys. One of Trout's boys
quits, and Billy offers to help Trout deliver the papers on the boy's
route. He gives Trout a ride. Trout is overwhelmed by meeting an avid fan.
He has only received one letter in the course of his career, and the letter
was crazed. It was written by none other than Billy's friend from the
mental ward, Elliot Rosewater. Billy invites Kilgore Trout to his
anniversary party.
At the party, Trout is obnoxious, but the optometrists and their spouses
are still enchanted by having an actual writer among them. A barbershop
quartet sings "That Old Gang of Mine," and Billy is visibly disturbed.
After giving Valencia her gift, he flees upstairs. Lying in bed, Billy
remembers the bombing of Dresden.
We see the events as Billy remembers them. He and the other POWs, along
with four of their guards, spend the night in the meat locker. The girls
from the shower were being killed in a shallower shelter nearby. The POWs
Страницы: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60
