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Chapter 1 In this first chapter, we see that the book is based on real events. Vonnegut, like the narrator, is a veteran of World War II, an earlier prisoner of war, and a witness to a great massacre. Vonnegut shares with us that he can’t write about the horror of Dresden. “There is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre,” but he feels that he has to say something. The book shows the author's struggle to find a way to write about what he saw so that it neither makes it seem good or bad. We keep this in the back of our minds as we read about Billy Pilgrim's life. The author is a character in the narrative. He is Kurt Vonnegut, the former POW, and he speaks of the many times he has tried and failed to write this book. It is Kurt Vonnegut, too, who says the first, "So it goes" after relating that the mother of his taxi driver during his visit to Dresden in 1967 was incinerated in the Dresden attack. "So it goes" is repeated after every death. It becomes a slogan. ralfamadorian philosophy (something you will find out about later). But because the phrase is first uttered by Vonnegut, writing as Vonnegut, each "So it goes" seems to come directly from the author. Chapter One also hints that time will be an important th