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Slaughterhouse Five
Chapter 1 Summary It is so short and jumbled and jangled … because there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. Vonnegut writes in his own voice, introducing his experience of the firebombing of Dresden, in eastern Germany, during World War II while he was a prisoner of war and his attempt for many years to complete a book on the subject. He begins with the claim that most of what follows is true, particularly the parts about war. With funding from the Guggenheim Foundation, Vonnegut and his wartime friend Bernhard V. O'Hare return to Dresden in 1967. In a taxi on the way to the Dresden slaughterhouse that served as their prison, Vonnegut and O'Hare strike up a conversation with the cab driver about life under communism. It is to this man, Gerhard Müller, as well as to O'Hare's wife, Mary, that Vonnegut dedicates Slaughterhouse-Five. Müller later sends O'Hare a Christmas card with wishes for world peace. Vonnegut relates his unsuccessful attempts to write about Dresden in the twenty- three years since he was there during the war. He is very proud of the outline of the story that he draws in crayon on the back of a roll of wallpaper. The wallpaper outline represents each character in a different color of crayon, with a line for each progressing through the story's chronology. Eventually the lines enter a zone of orange cross-hatching, which represents the firebombing, and those that survive the attack emerge and finally stop at the point when the POWs are returned. However, the outline does not help Vonnegut's writing. He initially expected to craft a masterpiece about this grave and immense subject, but, while the horrific destruction he witnessed occupies his mind over the years, it defies his attempts to capture it in writing. Vonnegut's antiwar stance only adds to the difficulty, since, as a filmmaker acquaintance remarks to him, writing a book against war would prevent war as effectively as writing... Please login to view comments from other users.
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