Slaughterhouse-Five (Characters)

Characters

Billy Pilgrim's Father

Billy Pilgrim's father, whose full name is not given, is a barber in Ilium, New York. He dies in a hunting accident while Billy is in military training in South Carolina. Billy attends his funeral shortly before being shipped overseas.

Billy Pilgrim's Mother

Billy's mother, whose name is not given, survives into old age. Billy visits her in a rest home in 1965.

Wild Bob

Wild Bob is an American prisoner of war who dies en route to Dresden. Shortly before he dies, he gives a speech to imaginary troops encouraging them to continue fighting the Germans and inviting them to visit him in the United States after the war. His delusions as to his troops and the glories of combat represent the overall absurdity of both war and the attempt to control the uncontrollable.

Howard W. Campbell Jr.

An American who has gone over to the Nazis and works in the German Ministry of Propaganda, Campbell visits the American prisoners in Dresden and tries to convince them to leave the Allies. Campbell is also the main character in Vonnegut's earlier novel Mother Night.

Colonel

See Wild Bob

Edgar Derby

Derby is a high school teacher from Indianapolis who becomes the unofficial leader of the American prisoners in Dresden. He is a fundamentally decent man and a natural leader. He is also very kind to Billy Pilgrim. After the firebombing of Dresden, he is caught stealing a teapot and is shot by the Germans for plundering — a pointless death that underscores the absurdity and tragedy of war.

English Colonel

See Head Englishman

Head Englishman

The head of the English prisoners of war is a colonel. He is friendly but slightly condescending to the Americans, who do not share the English prisoners' determination to remain disciplined, organized, and cheerful during their captivity.

Paul Lazzaro

Lazzaro is an American prisoner of war in Dresden who befriends Roland Weary and promises to avenge Weary's death, which Weary blames on Billy. Lazzaro survives the war and hires the assassin who kills Billy in 1976.

Lionel Merble

Lionel Merble is Billy Pilgrim's father-in-law. He sets Billy up in a successful optometry practice. He is killed in a plane crash when he and Billy are travelling to an optometrist's convention; Billy and the copilot are the only survivors. Although not a bad man, Lionel Merble may be seen as representing the callousness and shallow materialism of postwar America.

Bernard v. O'hare

Bernard is Vonnegut's "old war buddy" with whom Vonnegut witnessed the Dresden firebombing. A real-life person with whom Vonnegut travelled back to Dresden in the 1960s, Bernard makes an appearance at the novel's beginning.

Mary O'hare

Mary O'Hare is Bernard's wife and another real-life person to appear in the novel. Mary objects to Vonnegut's writing about Dresden, worrying that he might make war seem romantic and glamorous. Vonnegut promises that he will subtitle his book "The Children's Crusade."

Barbara Pilgrim

Barbara is Billy Pilgrim's daughter. It is on the night of her wedding that Billy is kidnapped by the Tralfamadorians. After her mother's death, Barbara assumes a parental role with the increasingly detached Billy and is both impatient with and embarrassed by Billy's stories about the Tralfamadorians.

Billy Pilgrim

At one point in Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut writes, "There are almost no characters in this story because most of the people in it are so sick and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces." This description certainly applies to Billy. From his earliest childhood memories of being tossed in the deep end of a pool to learn how to swim, or being dragged against his will on a family vacation to the Grand Canyon, Billy has been at the mercy of "enormous forces." As a soldier captured after the Battle of the Bulge by German soldiers, Billy is pathetically unprepared for the pressures of combat and reacts to the horrific events he witnesses, including the firebombing of Dresden, Germany, with varying degrees of disassociation and withdrawal. It is while he is a prisoner that he first becomes "unstuck in time," finding himself travelling into the past and future with no warning. This time travel is both a literal science-fiction event and a metaphor for the alienation and dislocation Billy, and contemporary humanity, feel in the face of overwhelming and inexplicable cruelty and violence.

Billy is later kidnapped by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore. The aliens' philosophy explicitly rejects the concept of free will. They believe that events cannot be changed by a person's actions. This idea reinforces the theme that Billy, and everyone else, is at the mercy of forces largely beyond our control. In fact, the only active response Billy has during the entire novel is his attempt to publicize his abduction by aliens. It is appropriate that the closest relationship Billy has is not with his wife or family but with Kilgore Trout, a science fiction writer whose novels see through the illusion of logic and control.

After the war, Billy becomes an optometrist, marries, and has two children. His life is mundane, but he continues his time-traveling experiences, which are, like everything else, beyond his power to control. His time spent with the Tralfamadorians helps him to gain a peaceful perspective on life. In the end, Billy comes to accept the fact that he cannot change events, and he devotes life to teaching the philosophy of the Tralfamadorians to the people of Earth.

Robert Pilgrim

Robert is Billy Pilgrim's son. After having "a lot of trouble" in high school, Robert joined the military, became a Green Beret, fought in Vietnam, and "became a fine young man."

Valencia Merble Pilgrim

Valencia is Billy Pilgrim's wife. A wealthy but unattractive woman, she is hopelessly in love with Billy, but Billy never really loves her and sees her as "one of the symptoms of his disease." While Billy is hospitalized after surviving his plane crash, Valencia is killed in a traffic accident while rushing to be with Billy in the hospital — another innocent victim of an absurd and indifferent universe.

Eliot Rosewater

Eliot Rosewater is a friendly eccentric with whom Billy Pilgrim shares a hospital room after Billy's breakdown. Rosewater and Billy "both found life meaningless, partly because of what they had seen in the war." It is Rosewater who introduces Billy to science fiction, especially the novels of Kilgore Trout. Rosewater is also the title character of Vonnegut's earlier novel God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater.

Bertrand Copeland Rumfoord

A Harvard professor and official Historian of the U.S. Air Force, Rumfoord shares a hospital room with Billy Pilgrim after Pilgrim's plane crash. Rumfoord is a fervent patriot and an outspoken supporter of the Allied firebombing of Dresden. He is, like Roland Weary, yet another example of the delusional belief in the romance of war and humanity's ability to control the uncontrollable.

Tralfamadorians

The alien race that kidnaps Billy Pilgrim are from the planet Tralfamadore. Although never represented as individuals, the Tralfamadorians provide the philosophy of time and free will that underlies the novel.

Kilgore Trout

Kilgore Trout is a science fiction novelist and Billy Pilgrim's favorite writer. He lives in Illium and supports himself by delivering newspapers. Billy meets Trout for the first time in 1964 and befriends him. Trout represents yet another way of trying to cope with the absurd tragedy of human existence. Some critics have also seen him as a projection of Vonnegut's own anxieties about being typecast as a science fiction writer. Both Trout and his novels are mentioned in other Vonnegut novels.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

One of the unusual aspects of Slaughterhouse-Five is that its author appears as a character in his on novel. Vonnegut appears throughout the first and last chapters, where he discusses his difficulty in writing the novel and his visit back to Dresden some twenty years after his imprisonment there.

Roland Weary

Weary is one of the three other soldiers captured with Billy Pilgrim after the Battle of the Bulge. He is a sadistic bully who despises Billy and whose hobbies include collecting instruments of torture. He imagines that there is great camaraderie between him and the two scouts with whom he and Billy are lost, but the scouts eventually abandon both Weary and Billy. Weary dies of gangrene on the train to Dresden, blames Billy for his death, and asks other soldiers to avenge him. Weary's aggressively violent nature and delusional belief in the romance of war represent the militarism and hatred that Vonnegut is condemning in the novel.

Montana Wildhack

Montana is a twenty-year-old American movie star who is kidnapped by the Tralfamadorians to be a mate for Billy Pilgrim during his captivity. She and Billy have a child while they are being kept by the Tralfamadorians.

Media Adaptations

• Slaughterhouse-Five was adapted for the screen by writer Stephen Geller and director George Roy Hill in 1972. The film stars Michael Sacks as Billy Pilgrim, Ron Leibman as Paul Lazzaro, and Valerie Perrine as Montana Wildhack. Available on MCA/Universal Home Video.
• The novel is also available in abridged form as a sound recording, read by the author, on Harper Audio, 1994.