Chapter 16 Summary and Analysis

Vonnegut meets his first wife, Jane, in kindergarten. Born a Quaker, Jane dies a high Episcopalian as the wife of Adam Yarmolinsky. Both her father and brother are Marines, being military Quakers like Richard M. Nixon. Jane attends Swathmore and embraces the austere Quakerism it practices, but she stops attending meetings after they marry, perhaps because Eastern congregations are as unwelcoming of strangers as Redfield's Folk Societies and Israeli kibbutzim. Jane's teenage prediction of many children comes true as she bears three and they later adopt Vonnegut's orphaned nephews. Jane dislikes the family she comes from (her mother is periodically insane) but adores her children. The marriage breakup produces much hydrofluoric acid. The grown children flying the coop brings on terrible loneliness, and Jane goes in for Transcendental Meditation (TM) with total abandon. Holy Communion replaces its high when Jane becomes...