50 Fun Facts About Slaughterhouse-Five

Who wrote Slaughterhouse-Five?

He was himself a prisoner of war in the city when it was firebombed.

What is the name of the novel's protagonist?

He is a chaplain's assistant in the war and later a wealthy professional in upstate New York.

In which month and year does the firestorm the prisoners survive take place?

The German guards hid their captives in a partly underground slaughterhouse.

What is the name of the planet whose inhabitants abduct Billy and put him in a zoo?

They see in four dimensions and observe every moment of time at once.

Which three-word phrase does the narrator repeat whenever a death is mentioned?

It appears 106 times, serving as refrain, transition, memento mori and comic relief.

How many times does the death refrain appear in the novel?

Vonnegut said his books are mosaics of tiny chips, and each chip is a joke.

What is the novel's famous first sentence?

American Book Review ranked it 38th among the hundred best first lines in 2010.

What is the novel's subtitle?

The full title also includes The Children's Crusade, a name promised to Mary O'Hare.

To whom did Vonnegut promise to call the book The Children's Crusade?

She complained they had been babies in the war and feared a book with parts for Frank Sinatra and John Wayne.

What is the protagonist's peacetime profession?

He marries Valencia Merble, whose father owns the town's school of optometry.

In which fictional New York town does Billy live?

The failed science-fiction writer he befriends lives there too, managing newspaper delivery boys.

During which engagement is Billy captured by the Germans?

He had been sent from a base in South Carolina to the front line in Luxembourg.

How does Roland Weary die?

The Germans confiscated his boots; on the train he convinces Paul Lazzaro that Billy is to blame.

How much does Paul Lazzaro claim he can have anyone killed for?

He is a sickly car thief from Cicero, Illinois, who calls revenge the sweetest thing in life.

For what crime do German soldiers execute Edgar Derby after the bombing?

Vonnegut called it the climax of the book; the real prisoner, Mike Palaia, was shot over a jar of food.

What was Edgar Derby's job before the war?

He felt he should fight rather than just send his students off to war; one son was a marine in the Pacific.

Which failed science fiction writer's work is Billy introduced to in the veterans' hospital?

Eliot Rosewater, who wrote the writer's only fan letter, makes the introduction.

How many fan letters has the failed science fiction writer ever received?

It came from Eliot Rosewater, who has a whole Vonnegut novel of his own.

What do the Tralfamadorians look like to humans?

They reveal that one of their test pilots will accidentally destroy the universe and nothing can be done.

Who is placed in the zoo alongside Billy as his mate?

She is a film star who had supposedly drowned in San Pedro Bay; they have a child together.

How many inhabited planets had the Tralfamadorians visited without finding talk of free will?

They had also studied reports on a hundred more.

How does Billy's wife Valencia die?

She was rushing to the hospital in Vermont where Billy lay after his plane crash in 1968.

With whom does Billy share a hospital room after the plane crash?

Bertram Rumfoord initially refuses to believe Billy was in Dresden, and looks like Theodore Roosevelt.

How is Billy killed in 1976?

He has just predicted his own death in a speech at a Chicago baseball stadium; the killer is hired by the elderly Lazzaro.

By 1976 in the novel, the United States has been partitioned into how many countries?

It has also been attacked by China with thermonuclear weapons.

'If you're ever in Cody, Wyoming, ask for' whom, according to a phrase Billy repeats to himself?

He is a superannuated officer who thinks the prisoners are his 451st Infantry Regiment and dies of pneumonia.

American-born Nazi Howard W. Campbell Jr. is the protagonist of which other Vonnegut novel?

He appears in a swastika-adorned cowboy hat and boots with a red, white and blue armband.

Bertram Rumfoord is likely related to Winston Niles Rumfoord, a character from which Vonnegut novel?

Billy's favourite science-fiction hack, meanwhile, returns as a main character in Breakfast of Champions.

What sound does the bird make at the end of the novel, after the firebombing?

The same bird sings outside Billy's hospital window.

The novel's opening interjection 'Listen:' has been said to mimic the opening of which medieval poem?

That poem opens with 'Hwaet!'

Which German name is given to the building where the prisoners are held in Dresden?

It was an empty slaughterhouse; the partly underground cellar saved the prisoners from the firestorm.

Whose 1963 book The Destruction of Dresden supplied Vonnegut's death toll of 135,000?

Later evidence-based research put the toll under 25,000; later editions carry no correction.

What did a North Dakota school district do with its copies of the novel in 1973?

Vonnegut replied with a letter titled 'I Am Very Real'.

Which 1982 US Supreme Court case concerned removing the novel and others from public libraries?

The court held that boards may not remove books simply because they dislike the ideas in them.

How did the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library respond to Republic High's 2011 ban of the book?

They went first-come, first-served to students of Republic High School.

For which two science fiction prizes was the novel nominated in 1970?

The 1972 film went one better and actually won a Hugo.

Which prize did the 1972 film adaptation win at the Cannes Film Festival?

Critics liked it, audiences did not; it flopped at the box office despite Vonnegut's praise.

Who directed the 1972 film of Slaughterhouse-Five?

Vonnegut wrote that he and Universal had made a flawless translation of the novel.

Which pianist's recordings of Bach are used throughout the 1972 film?

The fourth Brandenburg concerto accompanies Billy's first sight of Dresden.

Which Chicago theatre company premiered a stage adaptation of the novel in 1996?

An earlier stage version had played the Everyman Theatre in Liverpool in 1989.

Who wrote the 2020 graphic novel adaptation of Slaughterhouse-Five?

Albert Monteys drew it and BOOM! published it, the book's first comics adaptation.

How old is Werner Gluck, the German guard who leads Billy and Derby into a shower full of refugee girls?

He is Billy's distant cousin, though neither of them knows it.

Slaughterhouse-Five lost both of its 1970 science-fiction award nominations to which novel?

Ursula K. Le Guin's novel took the prizes; Vonnegut's book later made Time's list of the 100 best English-language novels since 1923.

Vonnegut said in 1995 that Billy Pilgrim was modelled on which thin soldier who died in Dresden?

He waited to say so publicly until he learned that both of the soldier's parents had died.

Edgar Derby's fate was based on a real prisoner executed for plundering what?

Accounts of Mike Palaia's jar vary between beans, fruit and cherries; the novel swaps it for a teapot.

Billy Pilgrim ends up owning half of three stands selling which frozen treat?

The novel describes it as a frozen custard giving all the pleasure of ice cream without the stiffness and cold.

Vonnegut's first bestseller, the novel peaked at which position on the New York Times list?

It stayed on the list for sixteen weeks after a March 1969 Times review said readers would either love it or push it back into the sci-fi corner.

In 2013 Guillermo del Toro announced a remake of the 1972 film using a script by which screenwriter?

The original film flopped at the box office despite critical praise and a Hugo Award.

Which actor played Billy Pilgrim in BBC Radio 3's 2009 feature-length dramatisation?

The drama was adapted by Dave Sheasby and scored by the band 65daysofstatic.

Whose name is on the 'for President!' bumper sticker on Valencia Pilgrim's Cadillac?

It nods to Ronald Reagan's failed 1968 bid for the Republican nomination; another sticker reads 'Impeach Earl Warren'.