There are countless symbols present in Kurt Vonnegut’s book Slaughterhouse-Five. The cover of this Critical Casebook sums up the key symbols to show the meaning behind the book.
The letters of the title are arranged in a manner that mimics a vision test. Not only is Billy Pilgrim, the main character of Slaughterhouse-Five, an optometrist, but true sight is also a reoccurring and prominent theme through the book. As an optometrist, Billy is meant to correct the vision of the ill sighted, but ironically, his vision is corrected by time travelling aliens. Another way true sight prevails is through the readers themselves, they decide weather they see Billy’s time traveling abilities as true, or they can argue that Billy is suffering from posttraumatic