Vonnegut’s friend from World War II, who also hid in the slaughterhouse during the bombing, O’Hare finds it difficult to recall memories of Dresden. He travels back to Germany with Vonnegut in the late 1960s in order to retrace his steps, and the two enjoy themselves as they tour a partially-reconstructed Dresden.
Get the entire Slaughterhouse-Five LitChart as a printable PDF.
Bernard O’Hare Character Timeline in Slaughterhouse-Five
The timeline below shows where the character Bernard O’Hare appears in Slaughterhouse-Five. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 1
...a Guggenheim grant in 1967, Vonnegut traveled back to Dresden with a wartime friend, Bernard O’Hare, and asked a cab driver how the city has fared since the firebombing of 1944....
(full context)
Vonnegut flashes back to his first attempt, earlier in the composition of Slaughterhouse-Five, at contacting O’Hare, who is now a district attorney living in Pennsylvania. Vonnegut says he wishes to catch...
(full context)
...version, is a field near Halle, where American and West European prisoners, including Vonnegut and O’Hare, are exchanged for Russians in a POW swap. After the swap, Vonnegut is sent to...
(full context)
Vonnegut returns to the story of his meeting with O’Hare, at O’Hare’s house in Pennsylvania, in 1964. He and O’Hare are seated while their children...
(full context)
Vonnegut and O’Hare pick up a book on the crusades and read about the actual Children’s Crusade, which...
(full context)
Vonnegut reads passages from a book on Dresden in the O’Hare’s guest bedroom. Dresden was under siege by the Prussians in 1760, and its partial destruction...
(full context)
Vonnegut and his daughters leave the O’Hares and visit the 1964 World’s Fair in New York, where Vonnegut wonders at the future...
(full context)
En route to Germany, where he is to meet O’Hare in 1967, Vonnegut’s plane is delayed and he feels that time has slowed to a...
(full context)
Chapter 3
...his house in Cody, Wyoming. Vonnegut says that this happened, and that he and Bernard O’Hare were there to witness it.
(full context)
Chapter 10
...moments to go back to, like his visit to East Germany with his friend Bernard O’Hare. Vonnegut remarks that he and his friend are now “well-to-do,” and repeats, “If you’re ever...
(full context)
O’Hare reads something in his notebook which states that 7 billion people will live on earth...
(full context)
