Chapter 9

"[Rumfoord] didn't know that [Lily] couldn't read much.  He knew very little about her, except that she was one more public demonstration that he was a superman" (Vonnegut 185).

This picture is of a Barbie doll, representing Lily.  In the quote, Vonnegut is describing Bertram Copeland Rumfoord, a seventy-year-old man who shares a hospital room with Billy Pilgrim after Billy was in a plane crash, and Rumfoord's twenty-three-year-old wife, Lily.  This larger description of Rumfoord goes along with Vonnegut's stated goal in the first chapter not to glorify soldiers and war.

This quote portrays Lily as a trophy wife who Rumfoord doesn't care about and only married because she was young and pretty, and it made him look good to be with her.  The book also mentions that Lily is Rumfoord's fifth wife.  This, along with the way Rumfoord treats Billy, paint him in a very negative light.  Rumfoord is also very vocal in his support of war.  Back at the beginning of Slaughterhouse Five, when Vonnegut is speaking in the first chapter, he promises a friend's wife that when he does write a war story, he won't glorify anything about the war, and he won't tell a story that will make children want to go to war one day.  So in the book, most of the soldiers are people like Billy Pilgrim, who don't want to be there and aren't huge heroes.  Characters who do support war, such as Roland Weary and Rumfoord, are portrayed negatively, often as violent, foolish men who think that they are better than they really are.