Kurt Vonnegut Chapter Summaries
Summarize-Within this chapter, the author, Kurt Vonnegut, introduces the novel by assuring readers that everything in this book is pretty much true, especially the parts about the war. He begins his explanation of his experiences beginning with him and his wartime friend, Bernard V. O’Hare, returning to Dresden in 1967 with funding from the Guggenheim Foundation. While being driven in a taxi to the slaughterhouse where Kurt and Bernard had been locked up as prisoners of war, the two men became friends with their taxi driver, Gerhard Muller. Gerhard stated to Vonnegut and O’Hare that he had been a prisoner to the Americans for a period of time. The three of them then had a discussion about communism. Around Christmastime, Gerhard sent
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Vonnegut then recounts his postwar life and explains how he encounters ignorance about the immensity of Dresden’s destruction and that when he contacted the U.S. Air Force for information, he discovered that the happenings of the Dresden War were still kept top secret. In 1964, Kurt took his daughter and her best friend with him to visit Bernard in Pennsylvania. He met Bernard’s wife, Mary who was disgusted by the fact that Kurt would probably portray him and Bernard in the book as men instead of the “babies” they had been. Kurt then promised to call the book “The Children’s Crusade” and Mary was happy. Later that night he read about the Children’s Crusade and the earlier Dresden bombing of 1760. While teaching at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop he landed a three-book contract. Slaughterhouse-Five would be his first, but it will be jumbled because there is nothing intelligent to write about a massacre. Relating back to when he visited Dresden again, he tells how in his hotel, his perception of passing time became distorted, as if someone were playing with the clocks. He then stated to readers that after writing his war book, he will not look back and he will write more fun books. The first chapter indicates that he wrote it after his war book , because he ends the chapter by stating how his novel will begin, and how it will
Vonnegut then recounts his postwar life and explains how he encounters ignorance about the immensity of Dresden’s destruction and that when he contacted the U.S. Air Force for information, he discovered that the happenings of the Dresden War were still kept top secret. In 1964, Kurt took his daughter and her best friend with him to visit Bernard in Pennsylvania. He met Bernard’s wife, Mary who was disgusted by the fact that Kurt would probably portray him and Bernard in the book as men instead of the “babies” they had been. Kurt then promised to call the book “The Children’s Crusade” and Mary was happy. Later that night he read about the Children’s Crusade and the earlier Dresden bombing of 1760. While teaching at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop he landed a three-book contract. Slaughterhouse-Five would be his first, but it will be jumbled because there is nothing intelligent to write about a massacre. Relating back to when he visited Dresden again, he tells how in his hotel, his perception of passing time became distorted, as if someone were playing with the clocks. He then stated to readers that after writing his war book, he will not look back and he will write more fun books. The first chapter indicates that he wrote it after his war book , because he ends the chapter by stating how his novel will begin, and how it will