Slaughterhouse-Five: Chapter 8 Summary & Analysis

Howard W. Campbell, Jr., who wrote the anti-American book read by the Germans in the POW camp, visits Billy’s group in Slaughterhouse-Five two days before the bombing of Dresden. He wishes to recruit Americans to fight with Germany against the Russians and wears his own uniform, with a red-white-blue swastika armband. The Americans are tired from eating so much syrup and barely listen to Campbell. As Campbell speaks, however, Derby rises, and Vonnegut interjects that, although the story has had few dramatic moments up till this point, this was a genuine dramatic moment. Derby gives a stirring speech about American ideal of freedom, and the desire to defeat the Nazis. He is interrupted by an air-raid siren.

The Americans, their guards, and Campbell go to a meat locker beneath the slaughterhouse. The first night nothing happens, but the second night the bombing takes place and 130,000 Dresdners are killed. Billy sleeps and thinks about Kilgore Trout, whom his daughter says she would like to kill, since he has planted strange ideas about aliens in Billy’s head. Trout lives in Ilium, has written 75 novels, and works as a circulation manager for the Ilium Gazette, which means managing paper delivery boys.

Billy first meets Trout when Trout is corralling his group of delivery boys (and one girl). Trout promises a trip to Martha’s Vineyard to whomever sells the most Sunday subscriptions. A boy quits and Trout calls him a “gutless wonder.” This is also the title of a book Trout wrote, in the 1930s, which, among other things, predicts the use of napalm in war.

Billy helps Trout deliver the papers of the boy who quits. Trout admits that he has only received one fan letter, from Eliot Rosewater, who Trout thought to be a teenager. Billy invites Trout to his 18th wedding anniversary. At the anniversary party, Trout talks to Maggie White, a young woman who does not read much, and tells her that he must tell the truth in his books, and that everything in his life he puts into his writing. He tells Maggie that God knows all the good and bad things she thinks and says, and will use that information on Judgment Day. Maggie grows scared and leaves.

A barbershop quartet (same as on the plane, later) sings “That Old Gang of Mine” to Valencia and Billy. Billy becomes sickened by the song and doesn’t understand why; he feels there is some “big secret” inside him of which he is unaware. Trout believes that Billy has seen through a “time window” but Billy denies this. Billy gives Valencia jewelry for their anniversary.

Trout follows Billy around the party and compares Billy’s expression to that of a dog standing on a mirror—total fear and confusion. Billy flees upstairs. In his room he remembers—he does not “come unstuck”—the booming sounds above the slaughterhouse during the bombing, and the fact that everyone above was being killed. Everything in the city was on fire. The German guards drew together, standing, and resembled the barbershop quartet singing downstairs at the party.

Billy and Montana Wildhack are lying in bed in the Tralfamadorian zoo. Montana asks Billy to tell her a story, and he tells of Dresden, the firebombing, and the guards who resemble a barbershop quartet, the surface of the city like a moon. After the firebombing, guards ordered the Americans to climb over the city’s rubble. An American plane flies over and strafes the POWs with machine-gun fire. Finally the Americans reach a Dresden suburb, where a German couple keeps open their inn. They take in the 100 POWs and four guards and bid the Americans a good night’s sleep.