A writer who set out to document the atomic bomb and ended up witnessing the end of the world. John is Vonnegut's everyman — educated, well-meaning, slightly passive, carried by events rather than driving them. He becomes a Bokononist, accepts the presidency of San Lorenzo, and survives the apocalypse not through heroism but through the same dumb luck that killed everyone else. His narration is flat and deadpan because processing what he's seen in any other register would destroy him.