Slaughterhouse 5 Book Project

                                                            Slaughterhouse 5 Daniel Marco

Part 1

            Have you ever wanted to visit the moon? Sure you have! But making the trip up into space is unimaginably expensive. Now, there’s no need to worry, because with our new Dreamscape Machine all you have to do is sit in a booth with our specially designed helmets and we can take you back to 1945 in Dresden after the famous firebombing. The landscape is just like it would be on the moon, and we’ve fitted it with gravity suppressors so you can feel like your floating. It’s just like the moon, except without all the hassle of going to space or dying from taking off your helmet or floating off into space if you jump too high. So what are you waiting for? Take the tour now!

Part 2

            I used this idea because it is how Billy describes Dresden after the firebombing. Billy and the rest of the American soldiers take shelter in the slaughterhouse as a rain of bombs hit the city above. After they come out he describes the city as looking like the moon due to the massive craters that consume the landscape and the ash and dust that cover everything in sight. On pg. 213 he says, “Germans were stopped there. They were not permitted to explore the moon,” showing his belief that it was a place that was no longer part of this world. I also wanted to show Billy’s experiences with getting unstuck in time as he often times will randomly drift off into his future or past and relive moments in that time, so I made the tours in the past so that I could demonstrate what it would be like to get unstuck in time. One of the many examples of Billy ‘time traveling’ happen on pg. 126, which says, “And Billy traveled in time back to the train he had taken in 1944.” The moon tours also show Billy’s fascination with other worlds besides Earth, especially a place he allegedly visited called Tralfamador. He says he learned many things from them, including the end of the universe, which happens when, “A Tralfamadorian test pilot presses a starter button, and the whole Universe disappears,” and I believe the moon tours in Dresden demonstrate another world that Billy might be fascinated with.

            I think this idea will work because it shows Billy’s peculiar personality that is obsessed with things others might leave untouched and is a unique take on the book as its ironic due to the fact that the promoters are trying to make money off the thing Kurt Vonnegut was trying to preach about and get people to realize and prevent. It can also promote the ideas of the book and influence readers to read it. It can also allow fans of the book to continue their experience by being in the same place andexperiencing the same things as Billy.