Reference no: EM133308876
Assignment:
Read pages 1-54 (about 2/3 of the way through Chapter, through the line: "Is there some way you can fix it so nobody will break up the Three Muskateers?"), and
1. On the title page, what do we learn of Vonnegut? What was the "fire-bombing of Dresden"? Look it up.
2. Why do you think the author of the text frames Billy's story with this opening chapter? Describe the author's early and repeated struggles to write this novel.
3. What does the author think will be the "climax of the book," and why?
4. How does the author make an early outline of the story? Significance?
5. What fatal accident does the author cover as a reporter? Why is this death ironic?
6. Why does Mary dislike the author?
7. What happened during the real Children's Crusade? So why subtitle S5 thus?
8. Why is the book "so short and jumbled and jangled"? the significance of "Poo-tee-weet"?
9. What does Celine have to say about Art and Death and Time?
10. So: why "So it goes"?
11. Why is the author "a pillar of salt"? Why will the book end "Poo-tee-weet"?
12. What are the major events of Billy's life depicted in this chapter?
13. What is Tralfamadore? What happens to Billy there? How does Billy describe the Tralfamadorians?
14. What ability do the Tralfamadorians have that Earthlings do not? Describe the Tralfamadorian conception of Time. So now you understand the origin of "So it goes."
15. Why is this conception of Time so comforting? Why is it fitting that Billy is an optometrist?
16. Describe Roland Weary (and his father) throughout this chapter: What is war to him? What obsesses him?