Give up on forgeting- Ch. 1

“All of this happened, more or less.” Is the sentence that initiates the book Slaughterhouse Five. With this we’ve been warned of the exposure of rawness and reality,

More or less.

Yet this first chapter is a testimony of an unidentified author who’s a veteran and intends to write about the war. The identity of the speaker is never explicitly revealed, but congruencies with Kurt Vonnegut’s life lead us to believe it is him who is speaking. Kurt Vonnegut's Biography

The story of the book doesn’t take place yet, but as he retells the story of his life we see that war scars everybody, and that writing this book was the way for Vonnegut to be in peace with his past.

He mentions that he was once asked by a movie-maker called Harrison Star if it was an anti war book, the one he was writing, to which he responded,

“Yes, I guess.”

And then Harrison Star tells him, “You know what I say to people when I hear they’re writing anti-war books? I say, ‘Why don’t you write an anti-glacier book instead’.”

Vonnegut consents. War is therefore unstoppable for him.

Yet he writes the book anyway.

Without a doubt is Kurt Vonnegut against war. In many phrases scattered around the chapter he gets this point across:

“It is short and jumbled and jangled, Sam, because the is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre.” (Referring to the book) (Pg. 19)

“I have told my sons that they are not under any circumstances to take part in massacres…not to work for companies which make massacre machinery.” (Pg. 19)

The last page of the chapter really gives sense to all the writing. Vonnegut makes reference to the tale of Sodom and Gomorrah, and King Lot’s wife, who was told not to look back to where her home and her people were, but did look back, and was turned into a pillar of salt.

With this reference, he consolidates with his past as Vonnegut says “People aren’t supposed to look back. I’m certainly not going to do it anymore.”

And then states that this book is a failure as it was written by a pillar of salt. But Vonnegut is in reality embracing his human nature with this book. He remembers one last time, because war is a part of him, because he needed look back.

So it goes.