Slaughterhouse-Five: Difference between revisions
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{{quote|It is so short and jumbled and jangled, Sam, because there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want anything ever again. Everything is supposed to be very quiet after a massacre, and it always is, except for the birds.
And what do the birds say? All there is to say about a massacre, things like ''"Poo-tee-weet?"''
Filmed in 1972 by George Roy Hill. Vonnegut liked it.
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** Not to mention the fact that the first chapter in the book was entirely about him describing some of his life and how he came to write his "famous Dresden novel".
* [[Brick Joke]]: In the first chapter, the narrator mentions drunkenly calling up old friends with his breath stinking of mustard gas and roses. In the fourth chapter, Billy gets an anonymous call and assumes the caller is a drunk whose breath smells like mustard gas and roses.
* [[Child Soldiers]]: Mrs. O'Here more or less considers young enlisted men to be this. We get to see more literal examples from
* [[Dewey Defeats Truman]]: We get a glimpse of the "future" in which the US is divided into various sectors among other things. The year? 1978.
* [[Disproportionate Retribution]]: Edgar Derby is shot by a firing squad for stealing a ''teapot'' from the ruins of Dresden. This after he wasn't even disciplined as far as we know for telling American traitor Howard J. Campbell to go fuck himself.
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* [[Divided States of America]]: In the future, before Billy dies, he's making a speech in the balkanized United States.
* [[Eagle Land]]: Type 2, especially in the writings of Howard W. Campbell, Jr. but to a lesser extent throughout the book.
* [[Early-Bird Cameo]]: At one point, Billy Pilgrim meets Howard W. Campbell, Jr. (lead of ''[[Mother Night]]'').
** As well as Killgore Trout and Eliot Rosewater.
* [[Fantastic Romance]]
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* [[Mental Time Travel]]
* [[Non-Linear Character]]: The Tralfamadorians.
* [[Oh, and X Dies]]: The narrator wastes no opportunity to remind us that Edgar Derby is going to be executed for stealing a teapot
** The movie makes a somewhat bigger deal about it.
** The first chapter, in which Vonnegut discusses his writing of the book, has Vonnegut toying with the idea of making Edgar Derby's death the climax of the novel -- a sort of appropriately retroactive [[Lampshade Hanging]].
* [[Prescience Is Predictable]]: Averted. Even though the Tralfamadorians and Billy see the future and are powerless to change it, they accept it gracefully.
{{quote|Billy had a framed prayer on his office wall which expressed his method for keeping going, even though he was unenthusiastic about living. A lot of patients who saw the prayer on Billy's wall told him that it helped them to keep going, too. It went like this: "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom always to tell the difference." Among the things Billy Pilgrim could not change were the past, the present, and the future.
* [[Quintessential British Gentleman]]: The British prisoners are so friendly, even the German guards like them.
* [[Shoot the Shaggy Dog]]: Considering that Billy can see how everything ends, it's easy for him to take this view.
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** [[Alice in Wonderland|"Drink Me"]].
** The narrator compares Dresden, Germany to [[The Wonderful Wizard of Oz|Oz]] when the American prisoners are first brought to the city.
** The English prisoners put on a production of
** Roland Weary refers to himself and the two scouts traveling with him as ''[[The Three Musketeers (novel)|The Three Musketeers]]''.
* [[Stiff Upper Lip]]: The English officers are pretty optimistic for being POW's.
* [[Time Dissonance]]
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