Slaughterhouse-Five Chapter 9 Post 1 of 2

     In chapter nine, Vonnegut really makes the reader doubt what is real and what is a fictional delusion in the tales involving Billy Pilgrim. However, Vonnegut does this in rather a comical or rather ridiculing way. Vonnegut uses his dark satire in chapter nine in order to change the way history is passed down. In the novel Rumfoord is presented as wanting to present the history of the Dresden bombing in a tinted light. Rumfoord does not want to listen to Billy's real life account; by satirizing the character of Rumfoord by making him seem dishonest and slithering. By using his satire, Vonnegut is ridiculing the shortcomings of his characters to bring about a change of how history is recorded. A prime example of Vonnegut's satiric voice is in a description of the historian author Rumfoord: "Professor Rumfoord said frightful things about Billy within Billy's hearing, confident that Billy no longer had any brain at all," (Vonnegut, 190). By this unfavorable description, Vonnegut is asking that the accounts of history are tainted and yet the youth of this world read to believe those accounts.