Some motifs worth tracking in Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five

Vonnegut's novel makes extensive use of motifs, as a technique for suggesting interconnections among episodes separated in time and space.  Here are a few you might want to keep track of.  You might find it useful to print off this page and keep it on-hand as you read.  You can then use it to jot in page references as these ideas show up.  Later on you might pick a few that strike your fancy and review the episodes they call together, asking what the point (or points) of doing this might be.

1. So it goes
2. If the accident will
3. an old fart with his memories and Pall Malls
4. My name is Jon Jonson
5. And so on
6. the smell of mustard gas and roses
7. The Children's Crusade
8. a dance with death
9. bobbing up and down, up and down
10. [feet or claws that are] blue and ivory
11. nestled like spoons
12. orange and black stripes
13. Adam & Eve
14. somewhere a big dog barked
15. a voice like a big bronze gong
16. Listen
17. bugs in amber / trapped in a blob of amber
18. radium dial
19. why you, why me?
20. birds
    • Poo-tee-weet?
21. Um, said Billy Pilgrim

You'll no doubt discover more.  Work them in, and see what they do.

  Go to the Study Guide to Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five and George Roy Hill's film adaptation of it.

  Suggestions are welcome.  Please send your comments to lyman@ksu.edu

  Contents copyright � 2004 by Lyman A. Baker. 

Permission is granted for non-commercial educational use; all other rights reserved.

  This page last updated 19 October 2004.