Beginning of Essay
This first chapter, a preface, is insistent on the fact that the book is based on real events. Vonnegut, like our narrator, is a veteran of World War II, a former prisoner of war, and a witness to a great massacre, and that fact lends a certain authority to what f ....

Middle of Essay
.... was incinerated in the Dresden attack. "So it goes" is repeated after every report of every death. It becomes a mantra of resignation, of acceptance, of a supremely Tralfamadorian philosophy (something we will be introduced to later). But because the phrase is first uttered by Vonnegut writing as Vonnegut, each "So it goes" seems to come directly from the author and from the world outside the fiction of the text. Chapter One also hints that time will be an important part of the fiction to follow. The author was going around and around in circles trying to create a linear narrative. He felt like he was stuck inside a children's song that continued in ....