Slaughterhouse-Five: The Novel and the Movie
Brian Rodriguez (1994)

      In 1972  director George Roy Hill  released his screen
adaptation  of Kurt  Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five  (or The
Children's Crusade; A Duty Dance  With Death). The film made
over  4  million  dollars  and  was  touted  as an "artistic
success"  by Vonnegut  (Film Comment,  41). In  fact, in  an
interview  with Film  Comment in  1985, Vonnegut  called the
film  a "flawless  translation" of  his novel,  which can be
considered an  honest assessment in light  of his reviews of
other adaptations  of his works: Happy  Birthday, Wanda June
(1971) "turned out so abominably"  that he asked to have his
name removed from it; and he found Slapstick of Another Kind
(1984) to be "perfectly horrible" (41,44). (This article was
writen  prior  to  Showtime's  Harrison  Bergeron,  and Fine
Line's Mother Night). A number of other Vonnegut novels have
been  optioned,  but  the  film  projects  have  either been
abandoned  during  production  or  never  advanced beyond an
unproduced screenplay adaptation,  indicating the difficulty
of translating  Vonnegut to the  silver screen. So  why does
Slaughterhouse-Five  succeed where  others fail?  The answer
lies in  how the source  is interpreted on  screen. Overall,
while  there  are  some  discrepancies  that  yield  varying
results, the film is a  faithful adaptation that succeeds in
translating  the  printed  words  into  visual  elements and
sounds which convincingly convey the novel's themes.
      While Vonnegut's literary style  is very noticeable in
Slaughterhouse-Five, the  novel as a whole  differs from the
majority of his  other works because it is  personal with an
interesting   point   of   view   technique   that  reflects
Vonnegut's own experiences in World War II and specifically,
the  fire-bombing  of  Dresden.  Slaughterhouse-Five has two
narrators, an  impersonal one and a  personal one, resulting
in a novel not only about  Dresden but also about the actual
act of writing a novel - in this case a novel about an event
that has shaped the author profoundly. The novel's themes of
cruelty, innocence, free will, regeneration, survival, time,
and war  recur throughout Vonnegut's  novels, as do  some of
his  characters, which  are typically  caricatures of  ideas
with little depth. Another mainstay is his use of historical
and fictional sources, and yet another is his preference for
description  over  dialogue.  These  aspects  of  Vonnegut's
literary style make the adaptation of Vonnegut to the screen
all  the more  difficult. Ironically,  many Vonnegut  novels
flow  with  a  cinematic  fluidity.  As  described  in  Film
Comment,  "Vonnegut's literary  vocabulary has  included the
printed page equivalents of  jump-cuts, montages, fades, and
flashbacks. And  his printed pace  even feels filmic,  as he
packs his scenes tightly together, butting them against each
other for maximum, often jarring, effect" (42).
      Slaughterhouse-Five, as the title  page points out, is
written by "a  fourth-generation German-American" who fought
as "an  American infantry scout"  and who "as  a prisoner of
war, witnessed the fire-bombing  of Dresden ... and survived
to  tell  the  tale."  It   is  a  "novel  somewhat  in  the
telegraphic  schizophrenic  manner  of  tales  of the planet
Tralfamadore" in that "there is  no beginning, no middle, no
end,  no  suspense,  no  moral..."  -  only  moments  strung
together in beautiful random order  that produce an image of
life that is  surprising and deep (88). It  is an innovative
story of a man named Billy Pilgrim who, like the author, has
survived  the  Dresden  fire-bombing  but  who  also  has an
uncontrollable ability to become "unstuck" in time. Billy is
also special in  that he lives part of his  life in a zoo on
the  distant planet  of Tralfamadore  which is  inhabited by
little green men  who can see in four  dimensions. The novel
is  structured   without  regard  to   chronological  order,
reflecting the  philosophies of the  Tralfamadorians and the
fact that "Billy is spastic in time" (23). The main emphasis
of  Slaughterhouse-Five  is  on  the  long  range effects of
Billy's  upbringing,  experiences,   and  interactions  with
others. As Monica Loeb  illustrates, "the novel demonstrates
how  the  human  soul  reacts  and  tries  to  recover  from
atrocities" (73). This occurs on  both a fictional level and
on the author's  level, and it can be  said that like Billy,
Vonnegut at  first "retreats into  a personal sphere  [after
the  war] and  gradually emerges  into a  prophetic mission"
(73).
      For  the most  part, Stephen  Geller's script  adheres
closely  to  the  source,   and  thematically  speaking  the
adaptation  is near  perfection despite  some deletions  and
alterations. Since  it would be  pointless to analyze  every
single change, only significant ones will be examined. First
of all,  in the novel, Edgar  Derby's execution is wonderful
because as  the personal narrator points  out, "the irony is
so great. A  whole city gets burned down,  and thousands and
thousands of  people are killed. And  then this one American
foot soldier is  arrested in the ruins for  taking a teapot.
And he's given  a regular trial and shot  by a firing squad"
(4). To  top it off,  during the trial,  Billy is forced  to
stand by  with a shovel  to bury Derby  with if he  is found
guilty.   In  the   movie   however   there  is   no  trial,
significantly deflating  the irony, and Billy  is not forced
to  stand by  with shovel  in hand.  Moreover, Derby  is not
executed for taking a teapot,  but rather for taking a small
porcelain figurine  of a dancer.  Having Billy stand  beside
the  epitome of  all that  is good  in the  novel during the
trial  only   serves  to  enhance   Billy's  innocence,  his
helplessness, and the focus of the novel.
      The movie version of  Derby's execution, while failing
to capture the irony and  helplessness of Billy, succeeds in
adding depth to Derby and hence  his loss seems all the more
great and  horrible. In the  movie, Derby reads  a letter he
plans to send  his wife to Billy. In that  letter he says he
is  being  moved  to  Dresden,  "the  town  where our little
porcelain dancing figure came  from... Remember the one that
Johnny  broke?" After  finding a  porcelain figurine  in the
rubble of what  was once Dresden, he shows  it to Billy with
a look  of joy  perhaps unparalleled  in the  movie. He then
explains how  it is identical to  the one his son  broke and
how happy his wife will be to  see it as he puts it into his
pocket and  walks away. Without Billy's  knowledge, Derby is
dragged away by three soldiers and shot in the background of
the scene as  two other soldiers in the  foreground chat and
toss the  figurine back into  the ruins. The  differences in
the adaptation give  more character to Derby and  add to the
themes of war, cruelty, and  free will, as Billy is helpless
to stop the senseless execution.
      One passage the film neglects to incorporate, probably
because  it would  only serve  as a  reinforcement of  other
scenes  and  lack  the  same  power  without  a narrator, is
perhaps the  most beautifully written passage  of the novel,
when  Billy watches  a war  movie backwards.  While the film
version does not lose meaning  with the omission, it is just
another  example of  the superiority  of the  novel. Here is
a brief excerpt of Billy's wish fulfillment which ultimately
ends with Hitler as an innocent Baby:

                 When  the bombers  got back  to their base,
         the steel  cylinders were ...  shipped back to  the
         United  States  of  America,  where  factories were
         operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders,
         separating  the dangerous  contents into  minerals.
         Touchingly, it was mainly  women who did this work.
         The  minerals were  then shipped  to specialists in
         remote  areas. it  was their  business ...  to hide
         them  cleverly,  so  they  would  never hurt anyone
         again (74-75).

      One of the major themes of Slaughterhouse-Five is that
individuals are truly "bugs in amber," physically stuck, but
retaining  their imagination.  Essentially the  entire novel
comes down to this one point; a hint of optimism in a dismal
picture  of the  world. In  the novel,  the phrase  "bugs in
amber"  is used  with some  regularity, and  enclosed spaces
abound -  from an actual cave,  to a train car,  to the zoo,
and even  to the enclosed  space of prenatal  "red light and
bubbling  sounds."  These  enclosed  spaces  signify Billy's
physical entrapment  in amber. In the  movie no reference is
made to "bugs in amber," and  yet the same effect is created
with shots that always seem to include the ceiling, creating
a sense of enclosure. As in  the novel, these 'caves' can be
unpleasant, scary, and associated with death, or they can be
a place of survival and security.
      Despite  the fact  that Billy  learns something  or is
affected in some way by  every person or alien he encounters
in the  novel, the movie  neglects to include  Kilgore Trout
and Vonnegut  himself, who actually  appears as a  "listless
plaything" in  his own work of  fiction. These omissions are
reasonable considering  the medium they  are a part  of, and
hence  difficult  to  adapt   to  film.  Ultimately  Trout's
presence in the novel serves to indicate Vonnegut's ideas of
the  role an  author has  in society.  Trout also  serves as
a projection of the author, and his books provide Billy (and
the reader) with new perspectives on his (or her) existence,
the human condition, and with criticisms of society.
      Not    only    does    Vonnegut    impersonally    and
almost-omnisciently  narrate Billy's  life in  chapters 2-9,
but he narrates  his own struggle to write  the novel and in
essence explains  the novel on a  personal level in chapters
1 and  10. These  introductory and  concluding chapters also
place the  novel in perspective  by re-entering reality  and
helping  the reader  to further  extrapolate Billy's journey
through space, time, and war to that of every person through
references   to   [then]   present   day   Robert  Kennedy's
assassination and  Vietnam. Vonnegut finished  the novel two
nights  after Kennedy  was shot,   and he  makes a  point of
telling  the reader.  It is  this sense  of Billy Pilgrim as
everyman  that   the  film  does   not  completely  develop.
Additionally, the narrator makes  four references to himself
in  chapters 2-9.  In one  instance the  narrator notes that
someone calls Dresden "Oz." He  continues with, "that was I.
That was me." This is the only intrusion that is retained in
the film, however it is Billy who utters "Oz" since there is
no  narrator in  the film,  aside from  the camera,  and the
typewriter from the film's introduction.
      Although  the   use  of  a  narrator   might  make  an
interesting  adaptation, George  Roy Hill  opted to  let the
camera tell the story, and  while the overall effect crafted
by  Vonnegut is  lost in  translation, the  film succeeds in
capturing its essence. In fact,  at times the film surpasses
the novel in  its transitions from one time  and location to
another. The film opens with a scene that is not directly in
the  novel in  which an  older Billy  types a  letter to the
editor   of  the   local   paper   explaining  what   he  is
experiencing. This  scene serves as  an introduction to  the
movie,  and the  typed words  (which the  camera directs our
attention  to) effectively  take the  place of  the personal
narrator  of chapter  one (minus  the authorial  presence of
Vonnegut),  and to  some extent  the impersonal  narrator of
chapter two  in which Vonnegut  reveals the entire  plot. As
Billy types, the sound of  the typewriter echoes through the
large empty  house, and the  viewer witnesses for  the first
time  what  Billy  means  by  becoming  "unstuck  in  time."
Throughout the movie, the camera  directs the viewer to what
should be seen much like  the narrator of the novel, whether
it  is  what  Billy  sees  through  his  innocent  eyes,  or
something that takes place somewhere else.
      Frequently the transitions used in the movie take root
in   the  novel,   but  the   film  also   creates  original
transitions.  One  of  the  better  examples  of these fluid
transitions,  original  or  otherwise,  representing Billy's
jumps through  time occurs when  Billy pulls a  blanket over
his head while  on the train to the  prison camp. The camera
lets  us see  things from  Billy's perspective,  and when he
lifts the cover  up we no longer see  the hobo telling Billy
how  he has  survived  worse  places (Incidentally,  he dies
shortly  thereafter.), but  instead we  see Billy's  mom. Of
course, we only see her for a second, as Billy quickly pulls
the  blanket  over  his  face  when  she sees him, partially
because "she  had gone to so  much trouble to give  him life
... and Billy didn't really like life at all" (102).
      Another  of  the  more  imaginative transitions occurs
while Billy  is taking a shower  at the prison camp.  As the
rush of water begins, the  camera slowly tilts upward to the
shower head and then back down. Instead of seeing a prisoner
of war,  the camera's movement reveals  a young Billy taking
a shower. Then in  one of the greatest scenes  from the book
and the movie, Billy's father  picks Billy up and throws him
into  a  pool  with  the  instruction  to "sink-or-swim." In
typical fashion,  Billy chooses death  over life, signifying
that authoritarian manners do not  provoke him even when his
life is on the line, as is later demonstrated while he is in
the war.
      One  instance  of  the  film  succeeding  in  adapting
a transition  from   the  novel  into   an  original  filmic
transition occurs as Billy is having his picture taken while
a prisoner  of  war.  In  the  novel,  this leads into Billy
getting his picture  taken at his wedding. The  movie on the
other hand,  combines the two  scenes into one  montage with
Billy  "time  tripping"  back  and  forth  between  the two,
demonstrating that its all the  same to Billy. The preceding
examples all  show how the film  successfully translates the
novel  on screen  while still  enforcing the  novel's themes
- especially Billy's  innocence in the   above cases. But  it
would  be  impossible  to  translate  the  novel  completely
without  at least  trying to  visually incorporate  the most
frequently used words in the entire novel.
      Eventhough Joyce Nelson is correct when she says, "the
emotional   detachment   created   in   the   novel  by  the
reoccurrence of the  phrase 'So it goes,' is  lacking in the
film," it is hard not to notice abrupt jump cuts in the film
that  seem  to  cinematically  scream,  "So  it goes" (150).
Several  examples  are  the  abrupt  cuts  following Derby's
death, the  crash of the  airplane, and after  Lazzaro tells
Derby to  take a "flying  fuck." In his  interview with Film
Comment,   Vonnegut   also   points   this  out:  "Everytime
somebody's killed, WHAM: They cut instantly. There's no time
... to  weep  and say  ...  what  a  good   guy  he  was ...
Nothing. Cut  to a radically different  situation before you
even have time  to regret the death." (43).  While there are
instances as  described by Vonnegut, the  level of emotional
detachment created  by the fatalistic chant  in the novel is
not present  in the film.  At one point,  the camera remains
steadily focused  for several seconds  on a pile  of burning
corpses, a shot that does not elicit emotional detachment.
      Slaughterhouse-Five is  also wonderful because  of its
constant use of descriptive  imagery, whether it pertains to
war, animals, sounds or smells.  The film handles the visual
imagery well; Billy really does look like a clown bopping up
and down  in his fur-collared impressario's  coat and silver
boots, but  other imagery would be  hard to duplicate. After
all, how does one show that  Weary's face is like a "toad in
a fishbowl" (48)?  Moreover, while the  film usually retains
Vonnegut's  colorful  descriptive  imagery,  there are times
when  the film  does not  even come  close. For example, the
train in  the novel is  likened to a  "single organism which
ate  and  drank  and  excreted  through  its ventilators. It
talked or sometimes yelled  through its ventilators, too. In
went water and  loaves of black bread ...  and out came shit
and piss and language" (70). The  train in the movie is just
that - a  train. The olfactory imagery is  not noticeable in
the   movie,  but   the  auditory   imagery  is   translated
successfully for the most part. In the novel, "sound is used
to reinforce the negative  effect already established by the
war imagery," as Monica Loeb  points out (101). In the movie
however,  few direct  links to  passages in  the book exist;
nevertheless, the net effect of  the ambiguity of the sounds
used  in the  film serves  the same  purpose as the negative
loud  sounds in  the novel   - they  both make  Billy relate
sounds  of harmless,  innocent things  to war.  In the  film
there are  many transitions facilitated  by sounds. This  is
accomplished through the  forced similarities between typing
sounds,  gun shots,  applause, screams,  bombs, an  airplane
crash, tanks, electric shock treatments, and trains.
      The  use  of  sound  does  not  end with sound effects
however, as  music is also incorporated  into the film. When
the young  German soldiers and their  old commander assemble
at  the  train  station  to  greet  the  American prisoners,
classical  piano  is  played   in  the  background.  As  the
"children" march,  bumping into each other,  the music makes
the  whole  scene  seem   like  a  joke,  emphasizing  their
child-like  innocence -  hence the  subtitle, The Children's
Crusade. The theme of  "The Children's Crusade" is portrayed
equally well in  the novel and in the  film. Classical music
is also played as the prisoners walk the streets of Dresden.
The  camera cuts  between shots  of young,  smiling Germans,
Billy's  look of  awe, children  playing in  the street, and
city landmarks as  the music plays, adding to  the beauty of
Dresden, and augmenting its senseless loss.
      In his interview with  Film Comment, Vonnegut says his
"books  are essentially  rational, built  more around  ideas
I want to discuss than characters  I want to analyze ... I'm
not  that interested  in individual  lives" (41).  The movie
successfully  portrays each  character it  retains from  the
book,  and  in  the  case  of  Paul Lazzaro, with surprising
success. In the novel, Lazzaro  is pure evil and Ron Leibman
plays him so believably it makes one wonder if such a person
could  actually exist.  In  essence,  Lazzaro and  Derby are
a foil,  a fact  not only  emphasized in  their behavior and
confrontations  in both  the film  and the  novel, but  also
through an  effect with no  direct parallel to  the novel in
which  action  in  the   foreground  frames  action  in  the
background. For example, as Derby reads the letter to Billy,
Lazzaro can  be seen in the  corner of the train  car. Billy
tells Derby he must be "the greatest father in the world" to
which Derby  replies, "I love  my son Billy.  I guess that's
all it takes."  In the background and then  with a match cut
we see Lazzaro's reaction to  the profuse goodness, which is
a look of disgust as he bangs  his head into the wall of the
car.
      Although Slaughterhouse-Five does not capture the full
meaning or the overall effect of the novel, it is a faithful
adaptation that is  able to portray the themes  of the novel
as a moving  picture. At times the movie  falls short of the
expectations set  by the novel, and  occasionally, the movie
excels  where  the  novel  falters.  In  writing  the novel,
Vonnegut  could  freely  do  as  he  pleased,  but producing
a movie  has additional  considerations, such  as a  limited
budget, time  restraints, and a lack  of resources. In other
words,  there   is  room  for   improvement.  The  emotional
detachment created  by the repetition  of "So it  goes," the
use  of  historical  and  fictional  sources, and Vonnegut's
simple  yet humorously  elegant descriptions  are definitely
missing from the adaptation. On the  other hand, who am I to
argue with Vonnegut,  who had the following to  say: "I love
George Roy Hill and Universal  Pictures, who made a flawless
translation  of my  novel Slaughterhouse-Five  to the silver
screen.  I drool  and cackle  every time  I watch that film,
because it  is so harmonious with  what I felt when  I wrote
the book" (Film Comment 41).  Whether or not someone who has
not read the  novel could get some meaning  from the film is
hard to decide, but if one considers that it would take just
about as  long to watch  the movie as  it would to  read the
book, the decision should be obvious.

Works Cited

Bianculli,  David.  "A  Kurt  Post-mortem  on  the Generally
Eclectic Theatre." Film Comment Nov.-Dec. 1985: 41-44.

Loeb, Monica. Vonnegut's Duty-Dance With Death. UMEA, 1979.

Nelson,   Joyce.  "Slaughterhouse-Five:   Novel  and  Film."
Literature/Film Quarterly. 1 (1973): 149-153.

Slaughterhouse-Five,  dir.  George  Roy  Hill,  with Michael
Sacks, Universal Pictures, 1972.

Vonnegut,   Kurt.   Slaughterhouse-Five.   New   York:  Dell
Publishing, 1968.

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