Slaughterhouse-Five Symbol Analysis

Although Slaughterhouse-Five as a physical space only appears in the novel in a few sections, it is a powerful symbol running through the entire work. It is, ironically, in this slaughterhouse where animals were killed and butchered that Billy, Derby, Lazzaro, and others are spared from the slaughter taking place outside: the firebombing of Dresden by Allied (US and UK) forces. But Billy is only protected by the slaughterhouse for so long: he eventually dies on Lazzaro’s order, in the 1970s, and his life between the war and his death is punctuated by violence and loss. Derby emerges from the slaughterhouse but is tried and executed for petty theft only days later. And Dresden, the larger “slaughterhouse” of Germany, becomes the novel's great and silent tragedy. Rumfoord, writing his own history, seeks more information about the bombings, as does Vonnegut as he researches his novel. Yet the more that is learned about the physical Slaughterhouse-Five, and about the Allied firebombings in Dresden, the more difficult it becomes to write about the horror of these events. Thus it has taken Vonnegut twenty-three years to compose his fragmented, time-shifting novel, and the book ends with the incineration of bodies that were not able to find a safe-haven from battle.