Beginning in the first full paragraph on page 20, the narrator and O'Hare find themselves waiting for their flight to Frankfurt. During this time, the narrator struggles with the concept of time passing quickly, and makes note of the books he had brought with him to occupy his time.
"I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go."
And notes another passage in reference to time/clocks, "Make them stop...don't let them move anymore at all...There, make them freeze...once and for all!...So that they won't disappear anymore!"
The narrator, being damaged by war, seems to be paranoid of time passing too quickly without having accomplished anything. In my opinion, it seems almost as if he is afraid that time and fate have ruled too much of his life, and now that he was aging, he doesn't want to let his life be strictly dictated by fate. Vonnegut states his situation very plainly and simply on page 21:
"Time obsessed him."
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