Slaughterhouse-Five Trivia
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47 free Slaughterhouse-Five trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
This Slaughterhouse-Five trivia quiz covers Kurt Vonnegut's 1969 novel about an optometrist who has come unstuck in time and the firebombing he survived in a Dresden meat locker. The easy questions cover the hero's name and profession, the planet that abducts him, the phrase repeated after every death, the city that burns and the author's own war. From there the quiz moves through the plot: Roland Weary and his clogs, Paul Lazzaro's revenge list, the honeymoon in Cape Ann, the plane crash in Vermont, Valencia's carbon monoxide, Montana Wildhack in the zoo dome, Edgar Derby's teapot and the assassination in a Chicago stadium in 1976. The hard end covers the frame and the afterlife of the book: the subtitle promised to Mary O'Hare, the first line ranked among the hundred best, the Beowulf echo of 'Listen', the 106 repetitions, the David Irving death toll Vonnegut borrowed, the North Dakota furnace, the Supreme Court case, the Cannes prize for the 1972 film, the Steppenwolf stage version and the characters on loan from Mother Night and The Sirens of Titan. Every answer was checked against the encyclopaedia entries for Slaughterhouse-Five and its 1972 film before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. Our Kurt Vonnegut, classic novels and World War II quizzes are natural next stops.
30 of 47 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Billy Pilgrim's son Robert, a teenage troublemaker, grows up to join which US special forces unit?
The Green Berets
The Green Berets: the former troublemaker ends up fighting in the Vietnam War as a Green Beret.
Q 02What is Billy Pilgrim's job in the US Army during World War II?
Chaplain's assistant
Chaplain's assistant: barely trained, Billy never meets his chaplain or gets a proper helmet or boots, and ends up wandering lost behind German lines.
Q 03What does a filmmaker tell Vonnegut to write instead of an anti-war book?
An anti-glacier book
An anti-glacier book: what he meant, Vonnegut explains, is that wars will always come and are as easy to stop as glaciers.
Q 04Which planet's inhabitants abduct Billy Pilgrim and put him on display in a zoo?
Tralfamadore
Tralfamadore: after a 1968 plane crash Billy tells a New York radio show about the abduction, and his daughter Barbara has to fetch him home.
Q 05Which three-word phrase does Slaughterhouse-Five repeat whenever a death is mentioned?
'So it goes'
'So it goes' is what Billy's alien abductors say about the dead, since to them a person who dies is still just fine in plenty of other moments.
Q 06What does Roland Weary call himself and the scouts?
Three Musketeers
Three Musketeers: the name was news to the two scouts, who soon tell Weary that he and Billy are on their own.
Q 07What is the first sentence of Slaughterhouse-Five?
'All this happened, more or less.'
'All this happened, more or less.' The narrator hedges at once: the war parts, anyway, are pretty much true.
Q 08What is the subtitle of Slaughterhouse-Five?
A Duty-Dance with Death
A Duty-Dance with Death: the main title names the Dresden slaughterhouse where Billy is held, whose underground meat locker shelters the prisoners from the firebombing.
Q 09To whom did Vonnegut promise to call the book The Children's Crusade?
Mary O'Hare, his war buddy's wife
Mary O'Hare, his war buddy's wife, said they had been babies in the war, so he promised a book with no part for Frank Sinatra or John Wayne.
Q 10What does Billy Pilgrim do for a living after the war?
Optometrist
Optometrist: Billy marries the daughter of the optometry school's owner, whose backing sets him up in practice and makes him rich.
Q 11In which New York town does Billy Pilgrim live?
Ilium
Ilium: after surviving a plane crash, Billy writes to the town's newspaper about the aliens who, he says, kidnapped him.
Q 12During which engagement is Billy captured by the Germans?
The Battle of the Bulge
The Battle of the Bulge: lost behind German lines, Roland Weary is in the middle of beating Billy up when German soldiers find them.
Q 13How does Roland Weary die?
Gangrene from wounds caused by wooden clogs
Gangrene from wounds caused by wooden clogs: his captors take his boots and make him march in clogs that cut into his feet.
Q 21What do Billy's alien abductors say only Earthlings ever talk about?
Free will
Free will: to beings who see every moment at once, things simply are the way they always will be, so there is nothing to choose.
Q 22How does Billy's wife Valencia die?
Carbon monoxide poisoning after a car crash
Carbon monoxide poisoning after a car crash: she is rushing to visit Billy, who has survived a plane crash, when she wrecks her own car.
Q 23With whom does Billy share a hospital room after the plane crash?
A Harvard history professor
Q 14What did fellow POW Paul Lazzaro do back home in Cicero, Illinois?
Stole cars
Stole cars: in the prison camp he tries to swipe cigarettes from a sleeping British officer, who wakes up and beats him.
Q 15For what crime do German soldiers execute Edgar Derby after the bombing?
Stealing a teapot
Stealing a teapot: Derby, who had stood up to the American Nazi recruiter Howard Campbell, is shot for taking one from the ruins.
Q 16What was Edgar Derby's job before the war?
High school teacher
High school teacher: at forty-four, Derby had pulled political strings to get into the army.
Q 17In the veterans' hospital, which fellow patient introduces Billy to science fiction novels?
Eliot Rosewater
Eliot Rosewater: like Billy, he is haunted by what he saw in the war, and the two find the novels help them cope.
Q 18What is Kilgore Trout's day job?
Manages paperboys
Manages paperboys: his novels have never made money, so he gets by bullying the boys who deliver the local paper.
Q 19What do Billy's alien abductors look like to humans?
Upright toilet plungers
Upright toilet plungers: unable to sleep on his daughter's wedding night, Billy walks out to meet their flying saucer.
Q 20Who is placed in the zoo alongside Billy as his mate?
Montana Wildhack
Montana Wildhack: a film star who vanished from Earth, she wakes up in the zoo beside Billy, and they have a child together.
A Harvard history professor: at first he does not believe Billy was in Dresden, but in the end he is convinced.
Q 24How is Billy killed in 1976?
Shot with a laser gun by an assassin
Shot with a laser gun by an assassin: Billy has just told a Chicago stadium crowd he is about to die, and the killer was hired by the elderly Paul Lazzaro.
Q 25Which prayer hangs framed on Billy Pilgrim's office wall?
The Serenity Prayer
The Serenity Prayer hangs there, yet among the things Billy cannot change, the book adds, are the past, the present and the future.
Q 26'If you're ever in Cody, Wyoming, ask for' whom, according to a phrase Billy repeats to himself?
Wild Bob
Wild Bob: a dying colonel, he invites the prisoners to a reunion in his hometown that he will not live to see.
Q 27American-born Nazi Howard W. Campbell Jr. is the protagonist of which other Vonnegut novel?
Mother Night
Mother Night: there Campbell turns out to be an American double agent whose Nazi radio broadcasts secretly pass coded information to the US.
Q 28Bertram Rumfoord is likely related to Winston Niles Rumfoord, a character from which Vonnegut novel?
The Sirens of Titan
The Sirens of Titan: there Winston flies his own spaceship into a time warp and comes out able to foresee the future.
Q 29What does the bird say in the last line of Slaughterhouse-Five?
'Poo-tee-weet?'
'Poo-tee-weet?': there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre, Vonnegut explains, so he gives the last word to a bird.
Q 30In Dresden, what does the factory where Billy and the other prisoners work produce?
Malt syrup
Malt syrup: meant for pregnant women, it is so delicious that Billy sneaks a spoonful to Edgar Derby, who bursts into tears.