An obscure science fiction writer, Kilgore Trout writes novels full of good ideas and bad writing, and is in some sense a caricature of Kurt Vonnegut, whose early writings were exercises in science fiction. Trout’s novels, with their reference to aliens, Jesus and the cross, and alternate futures, make an impression on Eliot Rosewater and Billy Pilgrim, and many of their details become details of Billy’s life and Vonnegut’s narrative.
Kilgore Trout Quotes in Slaughterhouse-Five
The Slaughterhouse-Five quotes below are all either spoken by Kilgore Trout or refer to Kilgore Trout. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 8
Quotes
Trout, incidentally, had written a book about a money tree. It had twenty-dollar bills for leaves. Its flowers were government bonds . . . It attracted human beings who killed each other around the roots and made very good fertilizer. So it goes.
Related Characters:
Kurt Vonnegut (speaker), Kilgore Trout
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
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Kilgore Trout Character Timeline in Slaughterhouse-Five
The timeline below shows where the character Kilgore Trout appears in Slaughterhouse-Five. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 5
...checked in for alcohol abuse. Rosewater introduces Billy to the science fiction writings of Kilgore Trout, an author of cheap paperbacks. Both Rosewater and Billy “found life meaningless, partly because of...
(full context)
...message of the original Gospels, which argue against hurting a “well-connected” person. Rosewater complains that Trout is a bad prose stylist; “only his ideas [are] good.”
(full context)
Chapter 8
...the bombing takes place and 130,000 Dresdners are killed. Billy sleeps and thinks about Kilgore Trout, whom his daughter says she would like to kill, since he has planted strange ideas...
(full context)
Billy first meets Trout when Trout is corralling his group of delivery boys (and one girl). Trout promises a...
(full context)
Billy helps Trout deliver the papers of the boy who quits. Trout admits that he has only received...
(full context)
...why; he feels there is some “big secret” inside him of which he is unaware. Trout believes that Billy has seen through a “time window” but Billy denies this. Billy gives...
(full context)
Trout follows Billy around the party and compares Billy’s expression to that of a dog standing...
(full context)
Chapter 9
...his experiences with the Tralfamadorians. Billy goes into an adult bookstore because he sees four Trout novels in the front window. He reads the beginning of a book called The Big...
(full context)
...much money as they can while the aliens observe their behavior. In another of the Trout novels, a man builds a time machine and travels back to meet a twelve-year-old Jesus....
(full context)
...him that adult materials are in the back of the shop. Billy continues reading the Trout book about Jesus and the time-machine; at the end, Jesus is killed, and the man...
(full context)
