Slaughterhouse-Five

by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

I have told my sons that they are not under any circumstances to take part in massacres, and that the news of massacres of enemies is not to fill them with satisfaction or glee. • • • I have also told them not to work for companies which make massacre machinery, and to express contempt for people who think we need machinery like that. • • •

“I think you guys are going to have to come up with a lot of wonderful new lies, or people just aren’t going to want to go on living.”

“How nice—to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.”

The flaw in the Christ stories, said the visitor from outer space, was that Christ, who didn’t look like much, was actually the Son of the Most Powerful Being in the Universe. Readers understood that, so, when they came to the crucifixion, they naturally thought, and Rosewater read out loud again: Oh, boy—they sure picked the wrong guy to lynch that time! And that thought had a brother: “There are right people to lynch.” Who? People not well connected. So it goes.

America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves.

“Go take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut,”

There are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces. One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters. But old Derby was a character now.