Slaughterhouse-Five

“The cattle are lowing,/The Baby awakes./But the little Lord Jesus/No crying He makes.”

The short epigraph at the beginning of the novel foreshadows many of the later themes. The lines are taken from the Christmas carol “Away in a Manger” and tell the story of the birth of Jesus Christ. The quiet of the baby Jesus will be like the quiet pain of Billy Pilgrim after he witnesses the bombing of Dresden. Although Billy’s story is one of pain and trauma, he will eventually possess a knowledge of the universe which transcends everything humanity thinks it knows. In this respect, Billy is like a religious figure. His quiet sobs in the wake of Dresden liken his situation to the birth of Jesus Christ. 

“All this happened, more or less.”

The opening line of the novel establishes the theme of the unreliable narrator. Both Billy Pilgrim and the narrator are present for the bombing of Dresden, and both are traumatized by their experiences. Memories and reality are tricky, fragile ideas in the novel, but the broad strokes of the events are declaratively true. Just like there is no official version of the story of Dresden, the narrator must piece together what he can remember from his painful past.