The novel Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut does not have titled chapters, making the first line of the chapter very vital to my and other’s expectation of what the chapter will contain. Chapter titles provide a structural outline to a story, the lack of subtitles in this novel make the story more free flowing. The first sentence of the first paragraph in each chapter does, essentially, what a title would do. The beginning sentence sets the reader up for the overall theme of the chapter and what is to be anticipated. I would also like to note the epigraph before the novel begins. The epigraph appears as:
“The cattle are loving, The Baby awakes.But the little Lord Jesus. No crying He makes.”
These short few lines are extracted from a christmas …show more content…
It is found that in this chapter Billy discovers two small miracle working lumps and also experiences his own death that has yet to happen, but has also already happened. The seventh chapter’s beginning line is: “Billy Pilgrim got onto a chartered airplane in Ilium twenty-five years after that.” This sentence made me think of the prior chapter and link it directly to this line, the narrator will write of Billy’s post-war experiences. The chapter contains a description of an accident Billy had gone through, Billy time travels once again to his time as a prisoner of war and what he had seen and what his duties were at his camp. The succeeding chapter commences with the sentence: “The Americans in the slaughterhouse had a very interesting visitor two days before Dresden was destroyed.” At first read I thought the remainder of the chapter will speak of the American prisoners of war and the ruination of Dresden. The eighth chapter did speak of Billy recalling the destruction of Dresden and how it had bothered him greatly. The focus is moved to discussing Billy 's meeting with a poor author, his favorite, and then later to the Tralfamadorian zoo and Billy 's companion there. All the chapters are a constant repetition of Billy 's travels throughout time. The ninth chapter begins with: “Here is how Billy Pilgrim lost his wife,
“The cattle are loving, The Baby awakes.But the little Lord Jesus. No crying He makes.”
These short few lines are extracted from a christmas …show more content…
It is found that in this chapter Billy discovers two small miracle working lumps and also experiences his own death that has yet to happen, but has also already happened. The seventh chapter’s beginning line is: “Billy Pilgrim got onto a chartered airplane in Ilium twenty-five years after that.” This sentence made me think of the prior chapter and link it directly to this line, the narrator will write of Billy’s post-war experiences. The chapter contains a description of an accident Billy had gone through, Billy time travels once again to his time as a prisoner of war and what he had seen and what his duties were at his camp. The succeeding chapter commences with the sentence: “The Americans in the slaughterhouse had a very interesting visitor two days before Dresden was destroyed.” At first read I thought the remainder of the chapter will speak of the American prisoners of war and the ruination of Dresden. The eighth chapter did speak of Billy recalling the destruction of Dresden and how it had bothered him greatly. The focus is moved to discussing Billy 's meeting with a poor author, his favorite, and then later to the Tralfamadorian zoo and Billy 's companion there. All the chapters are a constant repetition of Billy 's travels throughout time. The ninth chapter begins with: “Here is how Billy Pilgrim lost his wife,