Study Guide

Slaughterhouse-Five Chapter 1, Section 2

By Kurt Vonnegut

Chapter 1, Section 2

The narrator returns from his first stay in Germany as a prisoner of war 23 years before the beginning of the novel.
He's having a lot of trouble finding words, even now.
Look, dirty limericks, right there in the fourth paragraph! This book is a trip.
Once, the narrator was talking to filmmaker Harrison Starr; he tells the guy that yes, he's writing an anti-war book.
Starr replies that he may as well write an anti-glacier book. After all, you've got about as much chance of stopping a war as you do of stopping a glacier.
And even if you could stop war, there would still be death.