"Cliff Notes - Slaughterhouse Five" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cliff Notes)

One nice thing happens to Roland Weary. He gets to die in the way he would have wanted--in the arms of a true friend, Paul Lazzaro. Weary has finally found a kindred spirit, and he can rest at last, knowing that Lazzaro intends to carry out the last mission of Weary's life, to kill Billy Pilgrim.

^^^^^^^^^^SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE: PAUL LAZZARO

The American POW Paul Lazzaro is the ugliest and meanest character in the book. Not only is he disgusting to look at, he's nasty to the core, a real snake. In civilian life his friends are gangsters and killers, and he may be a gangster himself. The sweetest thing in life to him is getting revenge on people who have crossed him.

It's not surprising that he and Roland Weary become buddies. Both of them have regularly been snubbed by the more popular and attractive people in their lives. Yet Lazzaro is more pure in his ugliness than Weary. When Weary rambles on about different kinds of torture, he's speaking in the abstract, not talking about torturing anyone in particular. But when Lazzaro dreams up ways of hurting people, each torture is tailor-made for a specific victim.

Vonnegut's description of Lazzaro is devastating: "If he had been a dog in a city, a policeman would have shot him and sent his head to a laboratory, to see if he had rabies."

^^^^^^^^^^SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE: EDGAR DERBY

At the time of World War II, men and boys everywhere still wore hats whenever they went outdoors. But by then the derby, a hat with a dome-shaped crown, had become a bit out of date and was usually seen only on older men. Thus, you can tell by his name that Edgar Derby is an older man than his fellow American POWs, and his values are those he learned in an earlier era.

Because you know from the first that "poor old Edgar Derby" (as he is usually called) is doomed, you watch his gentle acts of kindness and generosity with a sinking heart. For Edgar Derby doesn't deserve to die. It is Derby who cradles the dying Weary's head in his lap (whatever Paul Lazzaro says), and it is Derby who volunteers to sit in the prison hospital with a crazed and doped-up Billy Pilgrim while the other Americans party with the Englishmen.

Derby believes that World War II is a just war. He had even pulled strings to get into the fighting after the army told him he was too old. And in Dresden, when the American Nazi Howard W. Campbell, Jr., tries to talk the prisoners into going over to his side, Derby stands up to him and makes a moving speech about the ideals of America: "freedom and justice and opportunities and fair play for all." This takes courage, considering the position he's in.

^^^^^^^^^^SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE: VALENCIA MERBLE PILGRIM

Billy first checks into the mental hospital after hearing himself propose marriage to this overweight, not very bright daughter of Ilium's richest optometrist. He sees her as "a symptom of his disease," his inability to deal with the alarming reality of the world and his lack of interest in life. But he marries her anyway, apparently for lack of a good reason not to. The marriage is hardly a great romance, but Billy finds it "at least bearable all the way." His unhappiness seems to have less to do with her than with life itself.

Considering that Vonnegut frequently prefers female over male values, it's difficult to find much to admire in Valencia. Not only is she unattractive, she's insensitive to the deep psychological damage Billy underwent in the war, from which he continues to suffer.

But for all her faults, Valencia adores Billy and is helplessly devoted to him. She is so terrified of losing him after he barely survives a plane crash that she wrecks her car on the way to the hospital, passes out, and dies from carbon monoxide fumes.

^^^^^^^^^^SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE: BARBARA PILGRIM

Barbara Pilgrim, Billy's put-upon daughter, has hardly had a chance to get married and set up her own household when her father almost dies in a plane crash. While he is in the hospital, her mother inadvertently kills herself in an auto accident. Then, when Billy comes home, he turns out to be prematurely senile from brain damage and begins telling crazy stories about time-travel and aliens kidnapping him in a flying saucer. Not only is she suddenly the head of the family, but her father's making a laughing stock of himself (and her) in public.

No wonder Barbara's a "bitchy flibbertigibbet."

^^^^^^^^^^SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE: BERTRAM COPELAND RUMFOORD

Billy meets Rumfoord while recuperating from the plane crash in 1968. Relentlessly virile and athletic, this seventy-year-old Harvard professor and Air Force historian embodies every traditional "masculine virtue" Billy finds so upsetting: blind patriotism, sexism (his young fifth wife is just "one more public demonstration" that he's a "superman"), and a firm belief in the survival of the fittest.

Vonnegut uses Rumfoord as the primary spokesman for what he calls the "military manner" of thinking, which orders and then cravenly justifies atrocities such as the bombing of Dresden.

^^^^^^^^^^SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE: THE TRALFAMADORIANS

The Tralfamadorians are "two feet high, and green, and shaped like plumber's friends" topped by "a little hand with a green eye in its palm." They can see in four dimensions, and this enables them to look at all time all at once, so death and the future hold no fear for them. The Tralfamadorians, who live on a distant planet, are creatures of science fiction.

Because of their alien perspective, the Tralfamadorians view human behavior with an objectivity few Earthlings can have. In this way, Vonnegut may be using the Tralfamadorians to tell you what he thinks about human conduct. Whenever the Tralfamadorians speak, Vonnegut may be revealing his own philosophy of life.

Some readers argue that the purpose of the Tralfamadorians is to resolve the contradictions in life that have made Billy so upset. In this interpretation, the aliens function in the same way as dreams and mythology: they "explain" things through images and stories.

Others see the Tralfamadorians as the "gods" in Billy's fantasy universe: they guide and protect the creatures in their charge. This makes them a big improvement over the "gods" Vonnegut sees as the rulers of the modern world--technology, which dehumanizes people, and authoritarian cruelty, which destroys people in the name of the "survival of the fittest."

The Tralfamadorians give Billy a philosophy through which he finds peace of mind. They also give him Montana Wildhack to mate with, and that brings him true happiness as well.