Billy Pilgrim the protagonist in the novel Slaughterhouse Five, will lead the story in a very unorthodox fashion due to the fact that he has been “unstuck in time.” He will experience many events in a non-linear format, jumping back and forth in time throughout his life. This novel never actually introduces who is narrating the events, but the author Kurt Vonnegut does chime in and share some of his input on certain events throughout the story which gives away that it is he who is sharing it. For a better understanding of the novel, this summary will be given in chronological order.
Part 1: The protagonist Billy Pilgrim is born in 1922 in Ilium, New York. He grows up to be a particularly wimpy and awkward man who for a short time studies at the Ilium school of optometry in 1944. He is then drafted into the war and with little battle training sent to Europe to partake in the Battle of Bulge. He
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This camp is located in an abandoned slaughterhouse. This slaughterhouse is the reason for the title of the novel. (Kurt Vonnegut at this time begins to hint to the audience that he actually took part in being captured and imprisoned in this slaughterhouse by expressing future events in great detail and emotion) Soon after they arrive here ( February 13, 1945), American bombers wreak havoc on the city. The attack leaves Dresden nearly completely destroyed, killing thousands of people in the process. Billy and some other prisoners are given jobs to help dig out bodies from the rubble of the city. After a couple of months, Billy is freed from the camp after the surrender of Germany in May 1945, he returns to New York to resume his optometry schooling. He then meets Valencia, the daughter of the school owner and gets engaged to her. He begins to experience a nervous breakdown and checks into a veterans hospital to recover. He eventually gets better but still finds himself crying for no