MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - MobileRead Discussion: Slaughterhouse Five by Kurk Vonnegut (spoilers)

WT Sharpe · 08-20-2011, 02:42 PM

I was wondering if any of the time-travel and extraterrestrial visits were intended to be real or a product of Billy Pilgrim's deluded mind. Billy Pilgrim was a real person, according to Kurt Vonnegut. His name was Edward R. Crone, Jr., and he was one of Vonnegut's fellow-prisoners in Dresden. Crone, who was not cut out for being a soldier, gave up completely on life and eventually died in that POW camp. He refused to eat, wouldn't talk, and spent his dying days staring at a wall. Surely Vonnegut's ideas for this novel came about as he pondered what mysterious thoughts must have been going on in the mind of his fellow prisoner in those days.

08-20-2011, 02:42 PM	#6
WT Sharpe Bah, humbug! Posts: 39,073 Karma: 157049943 Join Date: Jun 2009 Location: Chesapeake, VA, USA Device: Kindle Oasis, iPad Pro, & a Samsung Galaxy S9.	I was wondering if any of the time-travel and extraterrestrial visits were intended to be real or a product of Billy Pilgrim's deluded mind. Billy Pilgrim was a real person, according to Kurt Vonnegut. His name was Edward R. Crone, Jr., and he was one of Vonnegut's fellow-prisoners in Dresden. Crone, who was not cut out for being a soldier, gave up completely on life and eventually died in that POW camp. He refused to eat, wouldn't talk, and spent his dying days staring at a wall. Surely Vonnegut's ideas for this novel came about as he pondered what mysterious thoughts must have been going on in the mind of his fellow prisoner in those days.