ShmoopTube
Where Monty Python meets your 10th grade teacher.
Search Thousands of Shmoop Videos
Literature and Writing Videos 23 videos
Historical fiction novels like The Help can whisk you back to a place and time that you may have only read about in history books. Or... a place an...
In Markus Zusak's The Book Thief, Death narrates the story of one girl who lived during the Holocaust. Not surprisingly, it's kind of a downer—bu...
Brave New World is supposed be an exciting book about a negative utopia and the corrupt powers of authority. So where’s the big car chase? What's...
Slaughterhouse Five 20393 Views
Share It!
Description:
We wish the Tralfamadorians were as fun as they sound. But unfortunately, they're your garden variety kidnap-humans-and-torture-them type of alien.
Transcript
- 00:00
Slaughterhouse-Five, a la Shmoop. Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five is a
- 00:08
realistic depiction of what happens during and after war.
- 00:12
It has violence, trauma, alcoholism, and… alien abductions.
- 00:16
Wait, alien abductions? We don’t usually hear about those on Veteran’s Day.
- 00:21
But Billy Pilgrim is snatched away by the Tralfamdorians <<no official pronunciation
Full Transcript
- 00:24
– just sound out>> to live and mate in their interstellar zoo. You won’t find that in
- 00:29
any history textbook.
- 00:31
What is going on with Billy's trips to Tralfamadore? Take a look at when this book is set.
- 00:37
It’s the 1960s. Everything is trippy and psychedelic, and chances are if you weren’t
- 00:43
listening to Yellow Submarine, you were thinking you lived in one.
- 00:46
It’s a tie-dye state of mind, you dig? Billy’s groovy visions are just a result
- 00:53
of the times. He doesn’t exactly have a firm grasp on reality.
- 00:58
However, despite Billy’s tenuous grasp on the real world, these spacey trips are very
- 01:04
real to Billy…
- 01:05
… and the Tralfamadorians teach him some valuable lessons…
- 01:09
Like how time is totally predetermined and unchangeable and there is no free will.
- 01:14
Yikes. That would have us crying ourselves to sleep in our cage… if being in a cage
- 01:18
didn’t have us crying already.
- 01:20
Maybe by valuable lesson we mean: bleak and depressing lesson.
- 01:24
Either way, who cares if it’s all in his head? As long as it’s him and not us.
- 01:31
Real or not, maybe it's all just one big metaphor.
- 01:34
The Tralfamadorians are a lot like the Germans during World War two, except without the funny
- 01:39
little Charlie Chaplin mustache that Hitler ruined for everyone.
- 01:42
These aliens strip Billy of his choices… and his clothes…
- 01:45
…Take him captive, and make him subject to their rules and their reality.
- 01:49
He’s trapped like an animal in a zoo. They make him relive his World War two experience,
- 01:54
and there's nothing he can do to stop it. It’s the sci-fi version of post-traumatic
- 01:59
stress disorder.
- 02:00
If Billy was an actual monkey, instead of a human experiment, PETA would not be happy
- 02:05
about this. Back to reality, everyone. Buckle your seatbelts.
- 02:09
What do you think about Billy's trips to Tralfamadore?
- 02:13
Are they trippy hallucinations?
- 02:15
Are they part of Billy’s weird, sci-fi fantasy?
- 02:18
Or are they just a far-out metaphor? Shmoop amongst yourselves
Related Videos
They say that honesty is the best policy, but Jack lies about his identity and still gets the girl. Does that mean we should all lie to get what we...
Ever wish you could remember everything that you ever studied? How about everything that everyone has ever studied? Yeah, pretty sure our brains ju...
Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man is an American classic. Hope you're not expecting any exciting shower scenes though. It's not that kind of book.
Do not go gentle into that good night. In fact, if it's past your curfew, don't go at all into that good night. You just stay in your good bed and...
