Classics Without All the Class discussion

Once I hit chapter two, I realized what chapter one was. Chapter two begins the craziness: aliens, time jumps, etc. and Chapter one is the preface to it all where we meet the author of the rest of the book.

I think Chapter one grounds you a little before all the madness--how do you explain what a war does to you? How do you get across the soul-devastating mess that it makes inside a person? I think that explains why the book is so jumpy and filled with mixed up emotions and blurred reality. Chapter 1 is like an anchor to ground it, maybe?

And who is the narrator in chapter one? He says of himself and his friend Bernard V. O'Hare, "we were Mutt and Jeff in the war." So the narrator is either Mutt or Jeff. I'm halfway, and there is no break in the "Billy Pilgrim narration" yet. Do we meet Mutt/Jeff (the narrator) at the end of book again to explain why Billy's tale is so weird?

Mutt and Jeffare characters in a comic strip. Mutt and Jeff were of different heights so they looked funny standing side by side.

Here part of the paragraph you quoted:
"I got O'Hare on the line this way. He is short and I am tall. We were Mutt and Jeff in the war."

O'Hare is Jeff the short guy and the narrator is comparing himself to Mutt. I don't think the narrator is called Mutt.

I believe the first chapter is autobiographical. Vonnegut was a POW in Dresden during WW2 and witnessed the actual bombing. And since Vonnegut was 6'2'', it really fits with the narrator's description.

Yes, the first chapter is autobiographical. I found it to be an interesting way to start a novel, mixing the reality with the surreal that's to come.

Billy Pilgrim was never the narrator, was he? I thought the whole book was being narrated by Vonnegut himself!

Vonnegut is narrating Chapter 1 in much more of a first person voice. The rest of the book he is narrating as well, but it's almost a close third person to Billy.

Right! That could be so.

Courtney wrote: "Mutt and Jeff"

Courtney, thanks for that insight! That's a cultural reference I never would have spotted. That makes more sense now...

I had a lot of questions about the narrator beginning in chapter 2. Sometimes it seems like it's someone very close to Pilgrim, but then I noticed the narrator referred to "humans" every so often. That made it seem as if the narrator was not a human.

I agree that chapter 1 is autobiographical, but I'm still not certain about who it is afterward. I like the idea of a close third person, but that it's Vonnegut is still problematic. Why would Vonnegut refer to humans as "humans?" To not say it would be expected, but to say it brings attention to it in a way that makes me wonder what Vonnegut the writer was doing in those parts.

I wonder about "humans" in the sense that he's pointing out war's inherent inhumanity? As in, what really makes us human when we're capable of doing such inhuman things to each other?

I'd have to go back and read the context, but I think it an easy way to differentiate between Tralfadorian and human behavior. Recall Billy Pilgrim separates himself from "humans" with his new Tralfadorian knowledge, therefore, he can refer to his own species as humans when speaking in the context of the Tralfadorian aliens which is a figment of his imagination.

Whoah WHOAH! 'Figment of his imagination'?!?

Excuse me. The Tralfadorians are real certainly...how very human of me. Of course, I saw all this coming. It was just to provoke a response :-)