Mrs. Sander reminded us on her blog to think of colors, especially red. Unfortunately I forgot about the colors, but I thought back again and found a lot of connections...
Red: Roses are red...Vonnegut mentions the motif of "mustard gas and roses" several times, the first time being to describe the rancid smell of his breath as an aging man. The phrase is mentioned again later, this time as the smell emitted by the thousands of decaying human corpses in the piles of Dresden after the firebombing. The phrase is interesting, as mustard gas was a toxic but not deadly gas used in warfare starting WWI. It was the first form of gas which weakened but did not kill the soldiers of the other side. (source: Mrs. Helbing's World Civ. class). So insofar as mustard gas is unpleasant, red roses are a lovely symbol of love and prosperity. The phrase "mustard gad and roses" therefore shows the ruin of beautiful objects such as red roses by negative war objects such as mustard gas.
In Chapter 4, red comes up again as the stains of the comical yet gruesome civilian fur coat which Billy Pilgrim salvaged from the P.O.W. pile. These stains, gummy and the color of "crankcase drainings or strawberry jam" were accompanied by bullet holes and were therefore the blood of a shot civilian. Here, the red symbolizes bloodshed of civilians and all other humans killed in war.
Red is mentioned once again in Chapter 3 as "raspberry sherbet". I wrote of this in an earlier post. The scouts were shot dead by Germans, and they died in the snow quietly as the virgin snowfall seeped to the color of red raspberry sherbet. Again, red is a vivid reminder of blood shed for the futile purpose of war.
Blue- I believe blue symbolizes comfort in the novel. The Blue Fairy Godmother, who was part of the cheery British prisoners of war, knocked out Paul Lazarro but came to comfort him in the hospital. And of course, the Fairy Godmother in the true story of Cinderella provided all the comfort the little princess could need.
The azure curtains of the stage in the camp also provided comfort to the nearly-insane Billy Pilgrim. He made a nest of them to sleep in when he returned to an already-full bunk. Upon leaving for Dresden, he madly made a toga out of the blue curtains, swaddling himself as a mother would her child. Because he had reverted to this innocent, clueless state, the softness and richness of the azure curtains comforted him on the way to labor camp.
Another motif, "blue and ivory," appears many times in the novel. After being unstuck in time while typing an account of Tramalfadore, the old man version of Billy Pilgrim failed to notice his broken heater in his house. His daughter Barbara discovered him, nearly frozen and typing madly in his basement, and his feet were blue and ivory. In this case, Barbara was the comforter because she found him, but Billy was also comforted by typing his story of Tramalfadore. The motif also appears when Billy is riding on the P.O.W. train, "crucifying" himself on the crossbeam. Here, the opposite of comfort is presented, as his feet turn "blue and ivory" and he nears total breakdown.
Lastly, blue is presented again as a "navy blue curtain" which covered Billy and Montana's dome on Tramalfadore. Since the planet had no night, the controllers of the dome provided some hours of privacy and artificial darkness by dropping the navy curtain over the huge dome habitat. Under this curtain, Billy and Montana found comfort in producing a child and having private talks with each other each night.
Gold and silver: Gold and silver metallic colors symbolize insanity in Slaughterhouse-Five. Billy, freezing and vulnerable in the forest, looked into the shining, enviable boots of his German captor and saw Adam and Eve. He was so deranged and wishful for death that they became a beacon of hope during his insanity.
In another moment of craziness, Billy dons silver boots, which were Cinderella's silver slippers in the British men's silly play, on his way to Dresden because he lacked shoes during his second onset of out-of-body insanity. Lastly, still in this stupor, he finds the u-shaped partial denture in the bloody civilian coat. At first, he believes it is a horseshoe, but later, it turns out to be a silver mouthpiece of a wealthy civilian, now dead. "So it goes."
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