Slaughterhouse-Five Characters

Tralfamadorians

Residents of the planet Tralfamadore who abduct Billy. The Tralfamadorians have a unique concept of time. As they can see in four dimensions instead of three on their planet, they are able to perceive the inevitability of time. For the Tralfamadorians, the past, present, and future exist simultaneously, and moments are viewed as permanent. They first understand the concept of “free will” from human beings as humans are not aware of the inevitability of time and understand time to be a linear phenomenon.

Billy Pilgrim

Billy Pilgrim is the protagonist of the novel. A World War II veteran who survived the Allied Bombing of Dresden and a flourishing optometrist, Billy is a man who believes to have “come unstuck in time.” He travels from one moment to another in different time and space by walking through a door, not in linear order. His fragmented life makes up the structure of the novel. Billy’s unique time travel ability takes him to Tralfamadore, a planet inhabited by aliens, where he learns about the nonlinear nature of time.

Kurt Vonnegut

Although he is the narrator as well as the author of the novel, Vonnegut includes himself in the novel not as the protagonist but as a side character. His intrusive narrative is present throughout the novel to highlight the absurdity of war and how it doesn’t spare anyone and affects all. His narration appears especially in the sections that mention death, followed by the refrain “So it goes.” Vonnegut’s firsthand experience of World War II and his survival of the Allied Bombing of Dresden adds a factual touch to an otherwise seemingly remarkable fictitious account.

Bernard V. O’Hare

The character appears in the novel when Vonnegut, trying to document the happenings in Dresden, visits him and his wife in Pennsylvania. He is the author’s “old war buddy” and together with Mary, Bernard’s wife, Vonnegut grounds the novel in reality. Bernard accompanied Vonnegut to Dresden in 1967.

Mary O’Hare

Mary O’ Hare, Bernard V. O’ Hare’s wife, is another non-fictitious character in the novel. She gets upset with Vonnegut for glorifying war as soldiers are nothing but “babies” who are slaughtered. Vonnegut agrees with her that the ugly face of a war must be exposed and promises that he will not write anything that might glorify war or soldiers. Vonnegut dedicates the novel to her and subtitles it as The Children’s Crusade.

Gerhard Muller

Another non-fictitious character, Gerhard is a taxi driver whom Vonnegut and O’Hare befriend during their visit to the slaughterhouse in Dresden in 1967. He is a German whose mother was killed during the Allied bombing. Vonnegut dedicates the novel in part to him too as a gesture of humanity.

Roland Weary

Roland is a deluded American soldier, who is captured along with Billy Pilgrim by the Germans. While Billy is ill at ease and realizes the futility of the war, Roland fancies himself to be a hero and saves Billy’s life too to flaunt his heroism. He considers himself to be one of the “three musketeers.” He dies of gangrene on the way to the camp of the war prisoners; however, before his death, he wrongly proclaims that Billy is responsible for his plight.

The Scouts

They are the two young American soldiers, whom Roland Weary, in his delusional mind, considers as the other two “musketeers” of the three. However, in reality, the two quiet soldiers don’t feel any bond toward Weary. When the Germans capture Billy and Weary, they are shot dead.

Paul Lazzaro

A car thief from Illinois and also a prisoner of war, Paul hires an assassin to kill Billy in order to avenge the death of Roland Weary. Billy, because of his ability to time travel, remains unperturbed when Paul, a revenge-loving hooligan, promises to kill Billy. Billy foresees his killing, which he believes will take place in the year of 1976.

Edgar Derby

A prisoner of war in Dresden and a survivor of the Allied bombing, Edgar Derby, who is a high school teacher, is executed a month after the bombing by the firing squad for stealing a teapot from the wreckage.

Valencia Merble Pilgrim

Valencia is Billy Pilgrim’s fat, not-so-attractive wife, who loves Billy fiercely. Billy and Valencia together have two children. Her father, who is a successful optometrist, helps Billy set up his thriving business. She dies of carbon monoxide poisoning on her way to see her injured husband in the hospital.

Lionel Merble

He is Billy Pilgrim’s father-in-law, who helps Billy set up his optometry practice in exchange for Billy marrying his daughter, Valencia. Lionel is the owner of the Ilium School of Optometry.

Barbara Pilgrim

Barbara is Billy and Valencia’s inconsiderate daughter who is embarrassed by her father’s mental condition. Born to middle-class privilege, she is narrow-minded and self-serving, exhibiting little compassion toward her father.

Robert Pilgrim

Robert is the troubled teenage son of Billy and Valencia, who manages to “straighten out” his life later and becomes a Green Beret in the Vietnam War. Robert’s presence in the narrative during Billy’s later life demonstrates the ubiquity of war trauma in Billy’s life.

Mr. Pilgrim

He is Billy’s cruel father who dies in a hunting accident while Billy is away because of the war. He once nearly drowned Billy by throwing him into the YMCA pool in order to teach the young boy how to swim.

Mrs. Pilgrim

She is Billy’s well-meaning but empty mother who is described as a woman “trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.” When she visits Billy at the mental hospital, he is embarrassed by her because he feels guilty of being so indifferent in life. Billy later puts her in a nursing home.

Eliot Rosewater

A war veteran like Billy, who is trying to overcome the aftereffect of the war, Eliot is Billy’s neighbor in the psychiatric ward of the hospital. In order to escape reality, he relies on the poorly written science fiction novels of Kilgore Trout, and introduces Billy to Trout’s writings. Billy eventually becomes an admirer of Trout.

Kilgore Trout

Kilgore is an obscure, bitter, and ironic pulp science fiction writer, who functions as Vonnegut’s alter-ego and appears in his other novels as well. He hails from the same place as Billy, which Billy discovers later. Trout, through his writings, helps Billy recover from his mental breakdown. Later, Billy befriends him.

Howard W. Campbell, Jr.

An American writer turned Nazi, Howard represents all that is wrong with the concept of war. During his visit to the camp of war prisoners in Dresden, he tries to coax American soldiers into joining a Nazi German unit, The Free American Corps, to fight against the Russian. Campbell appears in Vonnegut’s 1961 novel Mother Night as the narrator.

Werner Gluck

Gluck is a tall, skinny teenage guard at the camp in Dresden who bonds with Billy over naked female bodies, forgetting their political differences. Through this bonding, Vonnegut highlights how essential human instincts, such as libido, can make people forget higher philosophies, such as political ideologies.

Wild Bob

An American army colonel in the German rail yard who loses his mind after the whole regiment under his command in battle is defeated and killed.

Montana Wildhack

A nubile, voluptuous adult film star, Montana is captured by the Tralfamadorians to be kept with Billy in the zoo on Tralfamadore. She becomes Billy’s mate, and he earns her trust and love. At the end of the novel, Billy fathers a child with Montana.

Bertram Copeland Rumfoord

A retired US Air Force general and Harvard historian with whom Billy shares his hospital room while recovering from the plane-crash accident.