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Science Fiction and Aliens
Themes and Colors
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Slaughterhouse-Five, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The novel contains a meditation on the nature of success. Vonnegut and O’Hare are both wealthy in the late 1960s, during the novel’s composition. Vonnegut never expected to have any money, yet he hopes his “Dresden novel” will be a big hit. Kilgore Trout, then, is Vonnegut’s foil, since his books are barely read by the public. But Trout’s ideas, which begin as fictions, are central to the philosophical investigations of the novel.
Pilgrim is not a good soldier. No one wants to lie near him on the railcar; he appears even to be a bad sleeper. But in later life he becomes a successful optometrist and marries Valencia, daughter of another successful optometrist. After his experiences with the Tralfamadorians it is shown, briefly, that Billy has become a famous speaker on the nature of time and death. Billy’s son Robert is a “success,” a soldier in the Green Berets in Vietnam, though he has become, in essence, a well-trained killer. Neither Vonnegut nor Pilgrim valorizes this kind of success.
These investigations of money and success lead to the larger issues of the war, and intertwine with the other themes. Was the firebombing of Dresden a “success”? In a small sense it was, since of course the unarmed citizens could mount no defense. But in a larger sense, the Allies have succeeded only in proving the futility and barbarity of war. Similarly, despite Pilgrim’s successes after the war, he appears to find purpose in life only after meeting with the Tralfamadorians. They show him the true nature of time, the inconsequence of his activities on earth, and the importance of enjoying the pleasant moments in the life he has led.
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Money and Success ThemeTracker
The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what degree, the theme of Money and Success appears in each chapter of Slaughterhouse-Five. Click or tap on any chapter to read its Summary & Analysis.
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Money and Success Quotes in Slaughterhouse-Five
Below you will find the important quotes in Slaughterhouse-Five related to the theme of Money and Success.
Chapter 2 Quotes
He didn’t look like a solider at all. He looked like a filthy flamingo.
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Vonnegut notes that Pilgrim has very little of the soldier about him - and he does so throughout the text. In this, Pilgrim is exactly not like the "heroes" Mary O'Hare fears Vonnegut might use to populate his text. Instead, Pilgrim is a man swept into war without really choosing that war, and without knowing how to fight. For Pilgrim, war is a set of confusions one might survive. It is not about tactics or the defeat of the enemy - it is about desperate self-preservation.Again, Vonnegut displays his humor here. Despite the horrors of the war and the genuine Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. N
Chapter 3 Quotes
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom always to tell the difference.
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This prayer for serenity, and for acknowledgement of what is and is not in someone's power, is a common one - it did not originate with Vonnegut, and it has been used in other contexts since Slaughterhouse-Five. But the prayer has a particular resonance for Vonnegut's novel. Because in the text, there are in fact some things that people might not necessarily believe are open to being changed - like, for example, narrative time - and these things are changed over the course of the novel, most famously in the notion that Billy Pilgrim has "come unstuck in time."What Vonnegut Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatib
Chapter 5 Quotes
And Billy had seen the greatest massacre in European history, which was the fire-bombing of Dresden. So it goes. So they were trying to re-invent themselves and their universe. Science fiction was a big help.
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Here, Vonnegut makes a serious justification of the social impact of science fiction. He argues that writers like Pilgrim and Trout are invested in sci-fi not simply because it is an interesting way to think about the world and its future - although it is that, too. Vonnegut argues that science fiction can be a vehicle for social change - a way of imagining how problems might be solved, a way of constructing another universe in which humans might live.This is another example of Vonnegut's self-reflexive commentary in Slaughterhouse-Five - his analysis of what it means to write a novel Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde eni
Chapter 7 Quotes
Billy thrust it into the vat, turned it around and around, making a gooey lollipop. He thrust it into his mouth . . . and then every cell in Billy’s body shook him with ravenous gratitude and applause.
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When Billy finds this enormous vat of sugar, he has not eaten for days, and his body is about to fall apart. In this way, Vonnegut links Pilgrim's appetites to the discussion of machine-hood, above - Pilgrim is, after all, a person who needs food in order to survive, and war has created a set of circumstances in which food is terribly hard to come by.The scene is also a comic one, another in a sequence of many throughout the novel, in which a man's serious problems (in this case, hunger) are contrasted with the humorous circumstances of wartime conflict Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut a
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.
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This is another of the metaphors Vonnegut uses to describe human behavior. Here, Vonnegut depicts the persuasive power of human greed. Humans, in this example, will always flock to the money tree - they will always be drawn to the bills that fall from it. Even though these bills will appeal to humans, they will not be distributed equally, but will instead cause the humans to fight with one another, and eventually to kill each other. But this is okay for the money tree, because the dead bodies of humans can then be used to fertilize the tree and encourage Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis
Chapter 9 Quotes
The staff thought Rumfoord was a hateful old man, conceited and cruel. He often said to them . . . that people who were weak deserved to die. Whereas the staff, of course, was devoted to the idea that weak people should be helped as much as possible, that nobody should die.
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Rumfoord, an army general who has been laid up in the hospital alongside others who have been wounded, has a theory of human strength and weakness that one finds throughout Vonnegut's novel - a theory that Vonnegut vehemently opposes. Rumfoord believes that war, like other extreme human activities, can "sort" humans into categories of strength and weakness. In other words, Rumfood believes that war is an accurate bellweather for who should survive and who shouldn't, because it forces people to come to terms with the power of their own wills.But for Vonnegut, this justification is basically absurd. War, in Vonnegut's Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor
