Chapter 1. External Conflict.

The first chapter of Slaughterhouse-Five helped me to become familiar with and identify some of the characters in the story. Vonnegut introduces many characters in the first chapter, as well as himself. He introduces his old friend from the war, Bernard O'Hare, as well as Bernard's wife, Mary. I was also able to identify an external conflict in the first chapter. When Vonnegut says, "Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want anything ever again. Everything is supposed to be quiet after a massacre, and it always is, except for the birds," he is expressing his feelings of the war. He expresses the conflict that society faces after a masacre, by explaining that after a war, no one knows exactly how to feel. There is sadness of course, but there is also the feeling of "what now?" People do not always know how to react to situations such as these, and it can often change a person completely, just as in some ways, Vonnegut was changed.