Slaughterhouse-Five: Novel vs. Film Comparison

Introduction

The novel Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was published in 1969, and George Roy Hill directed the film adaptation just three years later in 1972. While the major themes of the book remain intact in the movie, there are differences in texture and depth owing to the limitations of the film medium. Both the book and the film weave three storylines together through the life of the protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, who has become "unstuck" in time and randomly experiences life out of chronological order. One storyline focuses on Billy's suburban home life as an adult and as a child, another is based on Billy's experiences during the Second World War, and the third involves Billy's abduction by aliens and his time spent in a zoo on the planet Tralfamadore.

Common Themes Across Novel and Film

T. J. Matheson noted that critics hold a wide and varied interpretation of the meaning of Slaughterhouse-Five, ranging from a novel best appreciated as satire — where the horrors of war are simply accepted as an inescapable consequence of the human condition — to a plea for active pacifism, art as the only potential form of transcendence from such horrors, or the concept that "history, sex, religion, and life in general are all waste products of a world which is itself universally inconsequential" (228). Both the book and the movie make a case for each of these interpretations.

The theme of the destructiveness and capriciousness of war runs through both book and film. As both works progress, Billy slips back and forth between his life as a prisoner of war in a meat locker in Dresden — where he survives the firebombing of the city by Allied forces for no apparent strategic reason — and his life beyond that event.

One difference between the book and the movie can be found in the way the fate of the character Edgar Derby unfolds. Although the film is faithful to the novel in essence — Derby watches over Billy in the prison camp, is elected leader of his fellow prisoners, and is eventually shot for looting — the film explores the relationship between the two men more thoroughly. In the film, the father-son dynamic between them is heightened, exacerbating the pain of Derby's death. In the book, when Derby's death is finally recounted, it is remarkable only for its brevity and slight irony: "Somewhere in there the poor high school teacher Edgar Derby was caught with a teapot he had taken from the catacombs. He was arrested for plundering. He was tried and shot. So it goes" (Vonnegut, 214).

In the film, Derby takes a figurine identical to one broken by his son long ago. The incident is portrayed as the innocent act of a man far from home; he even shows the figurine to the guards, apparently expecting them to delight in his find. When he is immediately hauled off to a nearby wall and shot, the emotional impact of the horror and absurdity is inescapable.

Another theme explored by both the book and the movie is the concept of free will and time. Both portray free will as an illusion, conveyed through the perspective of the Tralfamadorians, who see time as a series of fixed moments and advise concentrating on the good while ignoring the bad in order to survive. Toward the end of the movie, Billy gives a speech about Tralfamadore in which he states, "life has no beginning, no middle, no end" (Hill, 138:08). Billy asserts that time and events are already determined in the fourth dimension and that our fate is sealed.

In the novel, this theme of stoic acceptance of one's destiny is rendered vividly. Billy boards a plane bound for Montreal knowing it is going to crash in Vermont, and even though "he knew it was going to crash, he didn't want to make a fool of himself by saying so" (Vonnegut, 154). The movie varies from the novel in that as Billy settles into his seat, he looks out the window and sees his future rescuers in ski masks standing near his family. He panics and attempts to get the pilots to abort the flight (Hill, 54:18). This variation, though subtle, is indicative of the difference in texture between the two works.

The Significance of the First Chapter

One major difference between the novel and the movie is the absence of the first chapter from the film. This chapter sets the tone for the reader and articulates many of the views later expanded upon in subsequent chapters. It also frames the novel as a story within a story, and in many ways it adds a layer of depth that is missing from the movie.

Vonnegut begins the novel by claiming, "All of this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true" (1). He then introduces prototypes for certain characters — Roland Weary, Edgar Derby, and Paul Lazzaro — who will later surface in the text: "One guy I knew really was shot in Dresden for taking a teapot that wasn't his. Another guy I knew really did threaten to have his personal enemies killed by hired gunmen after the war" (1).

The chapter is designed to lend credibility to the storyteller and, by extension, to the story itself, by letting the reader know that the author experienced the horrors of war firsthand and suffered their effects. "People aren't supposed to look back. I'm certainly not going to do it anymore. I've finished my war book now. The next one I write is going to be fun. This one was a failure, it had to be since it was written by a pillar of salt" — a reference to Lot's wife in the Bible (22).

Another scene in chapter one absent from the movie involves the author's interactions with Mary O'Hare, one of the individuals to whom the book is dedicated. Recounting an incident during the writing of the novel, Vonnegut describes a conversation between himself and Mary, the wife of Bernard, one of the author's war buddies whom Vonnegut visits to discuss Dresden. Mary is disturbed that Vonnegut intends to write a book about the war: "You'll pretend you were men instead of babies, and you'll be played in the movies by Frank Sinatra and John Wayne or some of those other glamorous war-loving, dirty old men. And war will just look wonderful, so we'll have a lot more of them. And they'll be fought by babies like the babies upstairs" (14).

In response, Vonnegut answers, "I don't think this book of mine is ever going to be finished… if I ever finish it though, I give you my word of honor: there won't be a part for Frank Sinatra or John Wayne" (15). True to his word, George Roy Hill's casting kept that promise.

Vonnegut also relates that over the years he was often asked what he was working on, and his answer was usually a book about Dresden: "I said that to Harrison Starr, the movie maker, one time, and he raised his eyebrows and inquired, 'Is it an anti-war book?' 'Yes,' I said. 'I guess.' 'You know what I say to people when I hear they're writing anti-war books?' 'No. What do you say, Harrison Starr?' 'I say, "Why don't you write an anti-glacier book instead?"'" (4). Vonnegut is saying there will always be wars; they are an inevitable part of the human condition. However, the central theme of this book is not anti-war so much as it is that life is meaningless and pointless, the universe does not care about the human race, and humanity's myopia and self-delusion blind people to this reality while leading them to their own destruction.

Conclusion

There will always be more information in the book than in the film, since productions have a time limit and a budget. Furthermore, not all of what is left out is essential, and a book has the advantage of permitting readers to use their imagination to set the scenes and envision the characters. While the movie retains many of the plot elements of the book, its message is less cynical. By selecting and expanding the more visual aspects of the book and bypassing the more verbal sections, Hill softened Vonnegut's central theme. Nonetheless, the movie is still able to convey the grief and absurdity of war, as well as the idea that the human race is very fragile and vulnerable in the context of the universe. Both works are interesting, thought-provoking, and entertaining given the respective media in which they are published and produced.

Works Cited

Hill, George Roy, dir. Slaughterhouse-Five. Universal Pictures, 1972. DVD.

Matheson, T. J. "'This Lousy Little Book': The Genesis and Development of Slaughterhouse-Five as Revealed in Chapter One." Studies in the Novel, Vol. 16, Issue 2, Summer 1984: 228–251. EBSCO. Web. 20 May 2013.

Kauffmann, Stanley. "Stanley Kauffmann on Films." New Republic, Vol. 166, Issue 20, 13 May 1972: 22–36. EBSCO. Web. 20 May 2013.

Reed, Peter J. "Peter J. Reed on the Structure of the Novel." Bloom's Guides: Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 2007. Print.

Vonnegut Jr., Kurt. Slaughterhouse-Five. New York: Random House, 1969. Print.