Chapter 12 Summary and Analysis

In 1985, Vonnegut is asked to speak at MIT, which his grandfather, father, uncle and brother all attended. The young people he addresses can do what Merlin can only pretend to do at Camelot: turn loose or reign in enormous forces. Had his brother, when he earned his doctorate in 1938, worked in Germany, Italy, Japan or the Soviet Union, he would have had to take part in making Hitler's dream of killing Jews and others in industrial quantities come true. Chemists supply Cyklon-B, and engineers provide the infrastructure to make the operation easy and efficient. Vonnegut has visited Auschwitz and Birkenau and seen A-plus technological designs, as good as the car bombs exploding today. Feminism notwithstanding, men and women differ in their attraction to immoral technology. With their children beside them, they outnumber men at demonstrations against lethal schemes and devices. The...