Slaughterhouse-Five: A Novel

Chapter 1

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?”

Chapter 2

Billy is spastic in time, has no control over where he is going next, and the trips aren’t necessarily fun. He is in a constant state of stage fright, he says, because he never knows what part of his life he is going to have to act in next. All moments, past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist. “When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in that particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments.

Chapter 5

“How nice—to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.”

Chapter 6

it is time for me to be dead for a little while—and then live again.”

Chapter 7

“All the real soldiers are dead,” she said.

Chapter 8

There are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces. One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters.

Chapter 9

“Everything is all right, and everybody has to do exactly what he does.

Vocabulary

rodomontades

golliwog

halitosis

solicitously

nacreous

echolalia