Summer Reading Assignment 1 Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

Advanced Placement Language and Composition

Ball High School

Summer Reading Assignment 1

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

Objectives, Author back ground information, and Historical Connection Included

AP Students must complete the attached discussion questions for each chapter and compose one essay discussing one of the prompts attached.

Slaughterhouse-Five

Objectives

1. Make connections between Slaughterhouse-Five and the modernist and postmodernist movements, especially in terms of: character development, plot structure, tone, and style.

2. Make connections between Slaughterhouse-Five and important social, philosophic, and scientific issues in the 20th Century, especially: World War II and the Dresden bombing, the Vietnam Conflict, the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy, Einstein’s theory of relativity, existentialism, postwar suburban living, Freud’s theory of Eros and Thanatos, etc.

3. Identify and explain the use of black humor, satire, parody, dramatic irony, structural irony and verbal irony, anti-hero, ambiguity in theme, science fiction, episodic plot structure, flat, and static characterization.

4. Identify and explain Vonnegut’s use of fi rst-person and third-person points of view.

5. Identify and explain Vonnegut’s use of simple, short sentences, and clipped dialogue.

6. Identity and explain the unconventional structure of Slaughterhouse-Five derived from associations between episodes.

7. Identify and explain Vonnegut’s approach to characterization in the novel.

8. Identify and explain Vonnegut’s use of both “high” and “low” literature in the novel.

9. Discuss and explain key themes and motifs in the book, using material from the text as well as content from outside research.

10. Contrast characters in the book, using material in the text as support.

11. Identify examples of important symbols and metaphors in the book, and explain their function.

12. Develop an opinion of the literary merit of the book, using textual and outside material for support.

13. Respond to multiple-choice questions similar to those that will appear on the Advanced Placement English Language and Composition Exam.

14. Respond to writing prompts similar to those that will appear on the Advanced

Placement English Language and Composition Exam.

Background Information

Kurt Vonnegut 1922 –

• Born November 11 in Indianapolis, Indiana, an economically stable and socially

conservative city in the Midwest.

• His father was an architect. His mother was from a prominent family. The Vonnegut family itself had achieved considerable prosperity and stability over three generations. His brother, Bernard, would later become an eminent atmospheric physicist.

• Vonnegut was seven in 1929 when the stock market crashed and the subsequent Great Depression devastated the Vonnegut family, Indianapolis, and the country. His family was forced to move from its mansion to a smaller home. His father, previously an arts lover, took a more practical turn, and his mother became despondent. Vonnegut was forced to attend public schools, unlike his older brother and sister, who had attended private schools. Vonnegut would later see his public school education as a positive experience.

• 1936-1940: Attended Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. Job prospects were scarce during the Depression so Vonnegut, following his family’s wishes, opted for a practical career as a biochemist, He majored in chemistry and biology. He served as managing editor and columnist for the school newspaper, the Cornell Sun. He was hospitalized for pneumonia in his junior year. He enlisted in the U.S. Army after losing his deferred status.

• 1943: He studied mechanical engineering as part of his military training.

• May, 1944: His mother committed suicide on Mother’s Day, overdosing on sleeping pills.

• 1944: He shipped out to England as part of the 106th Infantry Division. At this point in the war the Nazi, Japanese, and Italian war effort was in decline. Allied forces were bearing down on remaining Axis forces. Vonnegut’s 2nd Battalion, 423rd Regiment, however, suffered nearly total destruction in the last major German offensive of the war—the Battle of the Bulge. Vonnegut, then 23 years old, wandered behind enemy lines. On Dec. 19, 1944, he was captured by the Germans and sent by rail car to Dresden, where he worked in a factory making vitamin-enriched malt syrup for pregnant women.

• Feb. 13-14, 1945: Dresden was bombed and destroyed by the U.S. Air Force and Royal Air Force. Vonnegut and his group of workers survived because they were housed underground in a massive former meat locker. They were forced to work as corpse miners following the bombing, digging dead bodies out of the rubble. By spring, Russian troops took the area, and Vonnegut was returned to American forces in May. He underwent rehabilitation in France and in the United States.

• September 1945: Began graduate work in anthropology at University of Chicago after finishing rehabilitation and marrying his childhood sweetheart, Jane Cox.

• 1946-1947: Awarded his master’s degree in anthropology and worked part-time as a reporter for the City News Bureau. Moved to Schenectady, N.Y., and got a job as a publicist with the General Electric Corporation, where he frequently interacted with scientists.

• 1950-1965: Began to write fiction and published Player Piano, The Sirens of Titan, Mother Night, Cat’s Cradle, and a host of magazine stories, essays, and other work. Much of his early work was science fiction. He moved to Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and worked different jobs to supplement his income from writing.

• 1965–1967: Became a writer-in-residence at the University of Iowa Writers Workshop. Began to write Slaughterhouse-Five. Then returned to Cape Cod. Novel published by Delacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence. It became a best seller and was produced as a movie.

Historical Connection

Vonnegut’s life has been punctuated by war. He was born shortly after World War I. He served in the infantry in World War II. During his adulthood, the United States has had soldiers fight in Korea, Vietnam, and the Middle East. Vonnegut was idealistic at the start of his own military service, committed to the democratic ideals he learned in public school. The decimation of Vonnegut’s unit in the Battle of the Bulge and the bombing of Dresden radically altered his perspective. He took 20 years to formulate the ideas that took shape in Slaughterhouse-Five. The book was written, published, and became popular as the Vietnam Conflict escalated, lost support at home, and finally was abandoned. Vonnegut’s generation faced previously unimagined horrors of war, and was forced to come to grips with those experiences. The central backdrop to Slaughterhouse-Five is, of course, the fire bombing of Dresden in

1945. While most other German cities had been severely bombed by late in the war, Dresden had remained intact—a safe haven for refugees and wounded. The city was considered an “open city” by mutual agreement of both sides, since it had little military importance and substantial cultural and artistic signifi cance. U.S. Air Force and Royal Air Force bombers attacked the city over the course of two days, Feb. 13-14, 1945. German casualties totaled between 135,000 and 250,000, most of them civilians—the largest massacre in history, more lethal than the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that would come later that summer. By contrast, about 60,000 civilians died in the course of the War in England as a result of German bombing raids. Allied leaders would later claim justification for the bombing, but for years details of the atrocity remained confidential.

Over the course of Vonnegut’s lifetime, the United States has seen periods of exceptional prosperity and complacency between wars. During these salad days the war-weary populace often became apathetic and conservative, focusing on its own personal concerns. Slaughterhouse-Five is concerned as much with the effects of this socio-economic shift as with questions of war and death. Vonnegut contemplated Slaughterhouse-Five or what would become Slaughterhouse-Five in the midst of the 1950s. It was during that time that people

began to move en masse to the suburbs. They got jobs with large corporations (Vonnegut worked for General Electric), bought large cars, started buying take-out burgers and other fast food, held cocktail parties, and began watching television shows like Father Knows Best, Leave it to Beaver, and Hollywood movies—many of which glamorized war. The town of Ilium (which sounds like a Greek mythical paradise) and the lifestyle of Billy Pilgrim’s optometrist friends is a fictional, satiric American suburb of the time.

The 1960’s, a period of cultural, political, and social upheaval, also forms an important backdrop to Slaughterhouse-Five. Following the staid decade of the 1950s, African-Americans, college students, women, and other people on the fringe of the economic boom, turned society on its head. The Civil Rights Movement was born as blacks looked for voting rights, an end to segregation and racism, and economic equality. Boycotts, marches, and even urban riots marked the 1960’s. Those who opposed the escalating Vietnam Conflict took their fight public—starting mostly on college campuses. The anti-war demonstrators conducted sit-ins, took over college administration buildings, sometimes with violent results, as in the killing of four students at Kent State University in Ohio by Ohio National Guardsmen. Young adults “dropped out” of a society they believed was controlled by a “military-industrial complex,”

and instead moved to communal farms, or used drugs, listened to drug-influenced or social activist rock ’n’ roll, grew their hair long, or roamed the country in search of freedom, spiritual experiences, etc. The decade saw more than its share of personal violence, too, including the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy.

It was against this backdrop that Vonnegut wrote Slaughterhouse-Five on the campus of Iowa State University. It is safe to say the novel was both influenced by this social upheaval and made its own influence.

Mass media and popular culture began to proliferate during Vonnegut’s lifetime, first radio and movies, then television, mass-distribution magazines, etc. The result for Vonnegut was exposure to both “high” and “low” forms of culture. In other words, he grew up reading classic novels from his family library, and enjoyed more “high” culture in college, moving among intellectual and scientific circles; but he also lived through the golden age of radio with broadcasts featuring Jack Benny, Fred Allen, Henry Morgan, and Laurel and Hardy, and the early days of television, music records, movies, comic books, etc. These different forms of culture and entertainment influenced Vonnegut’s own style and subject matter. He also became critical of mass media and its effect on American thinking and behavior, as he does in Slaughterhouse-Five.

The middle of the 20th Century was also a time of great scientific and technological advancement. Being a trained scientist and engineer, and associating with scientists and technical people, Vonnegut was influenced by this advancement. In physics, the dominant discovery early in the century, of course, was Einstein’s work on the atomic and subatomic particles in nature. Einstein’s work rendered much of Newtonian physics obsolete, and radically altered how physicists, as well as other scientists, writers, artists, and philosophers all viewed time, space, cause, and effect. Anthropology, for instance—a field of science that

studies humanity’s physical and cultural characteristics—theorized that culture was a relative, not absolute, truth. Vonnegut had a degree in anthropology. In popular culture, Einstein’s work found its way into science fiction, a genre Vonnegut explored in his early writing. The “relativity” of truth also found its way into Slaughterhouse-Five. Of course, Einstein’s theories were also used to develop nuclear energy and the nuclear bombs that were dropped on Japan at the close of World War II.

The period from the late 19th century to the latter half of the 20th century is often referred to as the “modernist” period in art and literature. This is a period when artists and writers expressed increasingly radical views of existence. Everything that had previously provided stability to civilization and personal thought—God, religion, strict moral values, Capitalism—was now contested. Artists and writers experimented with different forms of art. In painting, realism was replaced by expressionism, then abstractionism. Musicians abandoned classical structures altogether and experimented with atonal forms. In literature, writers experimented with multiple perspectives, stream of consciousness, and other forms. And intellectuals tried to forge connections to the works of Einstein, Freud, Sartre, Marx, et al. Vonnegut himself, as a graduate anthropology student, wrote a thesis comparing cubist painters and the American Plains Indian Ghost Dance Society. By the time Vonnegut wrote Slaughterhouse-Five, some intellectuals had decided that the novel was a dead genre—that storytelling in any form had too many restrictions and could not possibly represent accurately the randomness, the power, and the scope of life. Yet some critics also believed that, in Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut managed to invent a new type of novel that defied conventions and still captured the essence of modern life, providing a form that requires the reader to make sense of an outwardly fractured, apparently meaningless, but artfully crafted work. The term “postmodernism,” was coined by social critics to name the movement that Slaughterhouse-Five and other ultra-radical artistic achievements of the late 20th Century helped birth.

Themes of Slaughterhouse-Five

Students must compose one paragraph discussing the following themes:

1. Human Reinvention

2. Relativity: perspective changes truth

3. Illusion of Free Will

4. Religious Satire

5. Anti-War

6. Victimizer and Victim; Apathy and Violence

7. Dehumanization

8. Anti-American

9. Paradise and Innocence

10. Anti-Hero

11. Renewal

Some of these themes are not clear-cut. You must close read and critically analyze in order to comprehend the above themes.

For each of the 11 themes listed above, you must write a one paragraph analysis. Each paragraph must have the theme asserted, specific evidence from the text that supports this theme and an explanation creating the rationale between the evidence and the assertion. These need to be either hand written or typed with Times New Roman 12 font. Please skip lines between each paragraph.

In addition, students must answer each of the following study questions, and compose one essay. (Prompts are included after the study questions-pick one of the six and write a well-developed analysis.)

Study Questions:

Chapter One

In what ways does Vonnegut use or refer to machines in Chapter 1? What can we infer from these references?
O’Hare produces a book called Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the

Madness of Crowds and reads several passages from the book. One passage is about the medieval European crusade to capture Palestine. Another is about a so-called Children’s Crusade. What is the significance of these passages?

When Vonnegut goes to sleep (“in one of the children’s rooms”) in O’Hare’s house, he finds on his bedside table a book entitled: Dresden, History, Stage and Gallery, which relates a shelling of Dresden in 1760. What is the significance of this history?
Chapter 1 is interwoven with subtle references to sleeping and waking. What are some of these references and what do they signify?
The last thing Vonnegut reads in his motel room is the Gideon Bible, specifically the story of Lot. Why do you suppose the author includes this text in his developing literary “scrapbook”?

Chapter Two

How does the structure of the second chapter resemble that of the first?
What is implied by the opening line in Chapter 2: “Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time?”
Why would Vonnegut choose the name Billy Pilgrim for his protagonist?
As they read deeper into Slaughterhouse-Five, readers will begin to notice the repetition of the phrase “so it goes” as a sort of refrain when a death is mentioned. What is the effect of this device? What is the author’s intention?
Slaughterhouse-Five features constant internal associations. That is, the reader notices subtle connections among characters, events, episodes, etc. For instance, something happens to one character that is eerily similar to that which happened to another. Find at least one of these associations. Can you infer the author’s intention in his use of this literary technique?
How is Vonnegut’s description of the Tralfamadorians satiric?
Slaughterhouse-Five presents a satiric view of organized religion. Where in the second chapter does that view begin to emerge? What can you say about this view at this point in the novel?
Vonnegut tells us that what had happened to Billy “wasn’t time travel. It had never happened, never would happen. It was the craziness of a dying young man with his shoes full of snow.” Why is this passage important?

Chapter Three

Vonnegut uses the scene of Billy’s capture by German soldiers to develop another aspect of the protagonist’s character—and another recurrent theme in Slaughterhouse-Five. What is this aspect, this theme? Where is the theme restated later in the chapter?
We have said before that Slaughterhouse-Five is fi lled with different forms of irony, often sarcastic. Irony is a subtly humorous inconsistency. Give at least one example of verbal irony in the third chapter. Give an example of structural irony from the book at large.
The second through ninth chapters of Slaughterhouse-Five are written in the third-person perspective. Have you noticed places in these chapters, however, where that perspective suddenly, momentarily, changes? Explain where this happens, and why.
The literary technique called stream-of-consciousness was an important invention of modernist writers like James Joyce, William Faulkner, and Virginia Woolf. Instead of using traditional narrative perspective, these authors told the story through the thought processes of a character. That interior monologue is sometimes disjointed, ungrammatical, illogical, thereby confusing the reader. Critics say Vonnegut’s writing shares similarities to that of these earlier authors. Can you say how?
How does Vonnegut use vivid imagery, personification, and metaphors/similes in the third chapter to aid his purpose?
Point out some references to water in this chapter and explain their metaphoric function.

Chapter Four

Name at least one other detail that connects the end of Chapter 3 and the boxcar with Chapter 4 and Ilium? What is the thematic purpose of this association?
What are some images of innocence, or Eden, featured in this chapter?
Billy, while “slightly unstuck in time,” watches a television movie about a

World War II bombing raid, only he views the movie in reverse. Explain the meaning of this passage in the context of your developing understanding of the book.

What is the significance of the images of entrapment? How do these images work with the images of innocence?
Why are so many of the images of entrapment the same as the images of innocence?
In various scenes in this chapter, Vonnegut interjects the phrase, “somewhere a dog barked.” Why?
Some literary critics see Billy as a Christ fi gure. What do you think of this interpretation?

Chapter Five

List some references to light and darkness in Chapter 5. Explain how these symbols connect to themes in the book.
The British prisoners stand out from nearly all other characters in the book. How? What do they symbolize?
Vonnegut tells us Billy and his friend Rosewater both found life meaningless after their experiences in the war. Both were “trying to re-invent themselves and their universe. Science Fiction was a big help.” One of the themes that emerge in Slaughterhouse-Five is deception as a means of survival, fiction as a means of making sense. Human beings reinvent themselves, and escape despair—often through their fabrications. Art is such a fabrication. Where is this theme seen in Chapter 5? Explain the relevance.
Vonnegut has Edgar Derby reinforce his two main points about war. What are they? What metaphor for war is used?
What is your opinion of the passage by Howard W. Campbell? Find evidence in modern society to support or refute Campbell.
How is the satiric treatment of religion, specifically Christianity, further developed in this chapter?
Before he was a novelist, Vonnegut was a scientist. He studied biology, chemistry, mechanical engineering, and anthropology. He enjoyed the company of scientists. His brother was a well-known physicist. Einstein’s theories were some of the hottest topics in science circles in Vonnegut’s day. How might those theories relate to Slaughterhouse-Five?

Chapter Six

How would you interpret the exchange between the surgeon and Billy in light of your growing understanding of the anti-war theme in the book?
What portrait of politics and political leaders does Vonnegut present in this chapter?
Many critics say Billy Pilgrim could be a literary allusion to The Pilgrim’s Progress, a famous 17th century allegory by John Bunyan. In what way is the novel like an allegory?
What is the significance of the novel’s title: Slaughterhouse-Five?

Chapter Seven

Why does Vonnegut include the brief scene of the refugee girls in the shower?
At the beginning of the chapter Vonnegut tells us Lionel Merble “was a machine.” Vonnegut then adds: “Tralfamadorians, of course, say that every creature and plant in the Universe is a machine.” Why is Merble a machine? Do you see evidence one way or another in this chapter to suggest Billy is a machine?

40. In an earlier chapter we were told that death, to the Tralfamadorians, is only a sort of hum, a comforting background sound. Vonnegut artfully has inserted in this chapter a variation on that hum. Explain the symbolism employed by Vonnegut.

41. What is symbolized by the syrup on page 160?

Chapter Eight

Explain the symbolism of the character Howard W. Campbell, Jr.
We have seen that periodically Vonnegut interjects himself into the narrative with commentary. One example at the top of page 164 (page number may vary) is especially important. Explain.
Discuss the effect of the barbershop music on Billy in this chapter.
Throughout mythology and literature, caves and other underground vaults have often held the ambiguous symbolic significance of representing wombs and/or tombs. Discuss the underground slaughterhouse “meat locker” and the Americans’ survival of the bombing in light of this symbolism.
Discuss the scene at the inn, with the blind innkeeper and his wife, and the treatment of the Americans, in light of developing motifs and themes in the book.

Chapter Nine

Vonnegut uses Rumford’s research, juxtaposed with Billy’s personal experience, as a literary device to view the Dresden firebombing and the Hiroshima bombing from several moral and political perspectives. Explain.
Cite three examples of satire in Chapter Nine, and explain the significance for each.
What does Billy’s fascination with the novels of Kilgore Trout—more so than the smut in the porn shop—tell us about him? What is Vonnegut’s attitude toward this fascination and the stories Billy finds fascinating?
How is the prayer that Montana wears around her neck symbolic? What is the association between the prayer and Billy’s behavior during this chapter?

Chapter Ten

From what you know about Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, is Vonnegut accurate when he writes on page 210, “Charles Darwin, who taught that those who die are meant to die, that corpses are improvements”?
How does the narrative point of view change in the last chapter? What is the effect of this literary strategy?
Vonnegut tells us, “Prisoners of war from many lands came together that morning” to begin digging for corpses. A Maori, (a person of Polynesian origin who lives in New Zealand) works side by side with Billy Pilgrim. What is the symbolism and significance of this segment?
What does Edgar Derby’s execution symbolize?
Does Slaughterhouse-Five end on a “happy note”?

PROMPTS:

1. Some critics assert that authorial intrusion is a characteristic of postmodernist style and gives the reader a certain degree of intimacy with the author.

Read the passage from the final chapter of Slaughterhouse-Five, from page 211, beginning: “If what Billy Pilgrim learned from the Tralfamadorians is true, that we will all live forever, no matter how dead we may sometimes seem to be...” to page 212, “ ‘I suppose,’ said O’Hare.” (Page numbers may vary.)

Then write a well-organized essay in which you analyze the effect Vonnegut has created with the moments when his voice intrudes into the narrative. Do not merely summarize the plot or list the specific examples of authorial intrusion.

Many postmodern novelists employ ambiguity effectively as a means to emphasize their belief in the lack of rational certainty in a universe that, they believe, has no intrinsic meaning. In a well-organized essay, explore the ambiguity in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five and explain how this ambiguity either supports or refutes postmodern tenets.

Typically, the element of plot is discussed in terms of Freytag’s pyramid—a linear sequence of story events, each subsequent event growing in magnitude until a certain turning point is reached and a conclusion revealed. In a well-written essay, analyze the extent to which the author either follows or violates this principle and the impact the plot structure has on the overall meaning of the novel.

Essays can be neatly handwritten or typed and must follow standard conventions. If you choose to type your essay, be sure to use Times New Roman font and size 12 ONLY. Essays need to have at least three body paragraphs, an introduction and a conclusion.

The discussion questions and the essay will be due on Wednesday, August 27^th. These will count as major grades. If you have questions, please email Catherine_jackson@gisd.org, portia481@yahoo.com, or call Catherine Jackson at (409) 939-7842.

Sources:

Information for this packet was developed and modified based on the following sources:

Prestwick House Inc. Clayton, DE 19938; 2006. Permission to copy this unit for classroom use is extended to purchaser for his or her personal use. This material, in whole or part, may not be copied for resale.

Vonnegut Website: www.vonnegutweb.com/index.html April, 2008. All additional sources were acquired from this page.