Where To Start?

What is more important? To voice every detail of an event, or to capture its essence and teach based on that, maybe both, maybe neither. The difficult part is figuring out how to go about either choice.

The narrator in Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut is facing exactly this. He fought in the Second World War and planned to write about the destruction in Dresden. However, this is easier said than done. Memories seem to elude him and although he’s attempted to retell the event countless times, he never seems to fully accomplish it. Yet here he is, once again attempting the seemingly impossible and he begins with a visit to an old war friend Bernard V. O’Hare. Afterward he decides to commence his story at the most obvious beginning, looking retrospectively on the dreadful that once was. Even though like Lot’s wife in the Gideon Bible, he’s been warned about what looking back entitles, he does it anyway, and at this point begins his story.

The narrator’s uncertainty is very relatable. I’ve experienced this hesitant state when apologize for my actions. I’m aware that I need to say I’m sorry, that even want to say it, but I never know where to start or how to exactly do it. Many times I find myself going about it in circles and abandoning ship right before I accomplish the goal, just to start again at the beginning. In the end I usually get it done, but the journey there is a long struggle, in the same way that it has been for the book’s narrator.