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Flashbacks
Chapter 8
Explanation and Analysis—Campbell as a Tick:
Edgar Derby compares Howard Campbell Jr. to a series of lowly animals through metaphor, serving as a foil for Pilgrim as he does so:
His stance was that of a punch-drunk fighter. His head was down. His fists were out front, waiting for information and battle plan. Derby raised his head, called Campbell a snake. He corrected that. He said that snakes couldn’t help being snakes, and that Campbell, who could help being what he was, was something much lower than a snake or a rat—or even a blood-filled tick.
The above quotation takes place during the most virulent anti-Nazi, pro-Allied Powers moment in the story. By comparing Campbell to a snake, but then comparing him instead to a rat or a tick—a blood-sucking parasite—Derby condemns the American traitor and also the Nazi Party as a whole. The various animal metaphors suggest that Campbell is less than human. As an anti-war novel, Slaughterhouse-Five does not perpetuate an idealized perspective of World War II, which makes this moment stand out in particular. The conviction Derby shows in this scene contrasts sharply against Pilgrim's detached and resigned attitude.
Derby, however, dies in an ironic fashion, shot dead not for his ideals or for his country but for stealing a tea kettle. The book thus suggests that Derby's conviction is meaningless: wars do not reward those who fight in them, even if they fight for good reasons. Rather, it is Pilgrim's perspective that dominates the novel, and Derby serves as a foil only to ultimately support the narrator's perspective on war as a dreadful harbinger of death and destruction.
Related Themes:
