About Edgar Derby: Trauma and Grief in the Unpublished Drafts of Kurt Vonnegut’sSlaughterhouse-Five

In this essay, I examine the unpublished drafts and false starts of Slaughterhouse-Five alongside Vonnegut’s notes and personal correspondences written between his return home from World War II and the publication of the novel in order to make the case that the novel is as much evidence of post-traumatic stress disorder as it is of a deep and prolonged grief. This grief is attached to a specific fellow prisoner-of-war who manifests in various incarnations in nearly all unpublished versions and early drafts of the novel. This individual is ultimately fictionalized in the character of Edgar Derby; however, many of his characteristics also prefigure the character of Billy Pilgrim.