

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.
This essay comes from the author's Welcome to the Monkey House Web Site.
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Last modified: May 12, 2002