The novel starts with Vonnegut writing in the first person; he notes that in the book he dramatizes the idea that human beings are machines, and he states that "when I create a character for a novel, say that he is what he is because of faulty wiring, or because of microscopic amounts of chemicals which he ate or failed to eat on that particular day." Vonnegut says he's going to purge himself of mental clutter and throughout the novel he examines—and often refutes—disparate concepts, from the "discovery" of the new world by Christopher Columbus in 1492 to euphemisms for genitalia.