People
What is Billy Pilgrim's wife's name?
Valencia
The two major settings of chapter 10.
The hospital in Vermont and the bookstore in NYC.
How did Billy's wife die?
She died of carbon-monoxide poisoning after rushing to the hospital to see Billy after the plane crash.
What two major assassinations does the narrator mention in the first two paragraphs?
Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King.
What does the phrase "so it goes" mean in the novel?
While a person is dead in one particular moment, they are still alive and well in all of the other moments of their life, because all of time exists at once
He "was a retired brigadier general in the Air Force Reserve, the official Air Force Historian, a full professor, [and] the author of 26 books" (Vonnegut 184).
Bertram Copeland Rumfoord
Why is the bookstore in New York City for "adults only" (Vonnegut 200).
Because there "were peep shows in the back that showed movies of young women and men with no clothes on" (200).
What does Billy do when he "wasn't supposed to work or even leave the house" (Vonnegut 199)?
He goes to New York City to "tell the world about the lessons of Tralfamadore" (199).
What do KV, O'Hare, Billy, and the other POWS have to do two days after Dresden was bombed?
They had to dig for bodies in the destroyed city.
What is the significance of the bird cry “poo-tee-weet”?
There is nothing intelligent to say about war.
What is the name of Rumfoord's fifth wife?
Lily
What part of the New York City bookstore interests Billy?
He was "thrilled by the Kilgore Trout novels in the front" (Vonnegut 201).
Describe the state of the horses that carried Billy and his fellow soldiers in the cart.
The "horses' mouths were bleeding, gashed by the bits, [...] the horses' hooves were broken, so that every step meant agony, [...] the horses were insane with thirst" (Vonnegut 196).
What "crime" was Derby arrested for?
He was arrested for "plundering" (Vonnegut 214).
What is the "Children's Crusade?"
“The Children’s Crusade” refers to the youthfulness of the soldiers who fought in World War II. The novel is subtitled "The Children's Crusade" to emphasize the youth and inexperience of the soldiers fighting in the wars.
Which character subscribes to this idea:
"People who were weak deserved to die" (Vonnegut 193).
Rumfoord
Why do Billy and the others go back to the slaughterhouse two days after the war ended?
To get "souvenirs of the war" (Vonnegut 194).
According to Midnight Pussycats, what really happened to Montana Wildhack?
Suicide or murder. The magazine "promised that she was waring a cement overcoat under thirty fathoms of saltwater in San Pedro Bay" (Vonnegut 204)
How does KV describe the smell of the bodies that they dug up in Dresden?
He says "the stink was like roses and mustard gas" (214).
Why do you think Vonnegut chose to structure the story in such an unconventional way rather than in a chronological way or through a more traditional flashback structure?
To mirror the chaos of war, to mirror PTSD episodes, etc.
What is the NAME of the person this quote describes:
"This was a boy who had flunked out of high school, who had been an alcoholic at sixteen, who had run with a rotten bunch of kids" (Vonnegut 189).
Billy's son Robert
What is the name of the hotel Billy stays in in New York City?
The Royalton Hotel on Forty-forth Street.
What was the name of the ship that Billy went home on?
The Lucretia A. Mott.
What thought goes through KV's mind as he flies over East Germany with O'Hare?
He "imagined dropping bombs on those lights, those villages and cities and towns" (Vonnegut 211).
How many times is "so it goes" said in Slaughterhouse-Five?
106