Slaughterhouse Chapter 1

I like how the first sentence just draws you in, and the subtle use of foreshadowing. One of my favorite peieces in this is the lines "It looked like Dayton, Ohio, more open spaces than Dayton has. There must be tons of human bone meal in the ground" (1) Right off the bat it lets you know death lurks under every seemingly nice surface. The author alludes to a drinking problem that brings out a yearning for the past and also brings up wartime smells of mustard gas and the scent of the old girlfriends he likes to call, roses. This chapter also alludes to the ending of the book, the execution of Derby. Another piece I liked was "he told me about the concentration camps, and about how the germans had made soap and candles out of the fat of dead jews and so on. All I could say was "I know, I know, I know."" (10) I like how you can feel the emphasis and how tired he feels of war. He also meantions thta the kindest best and most tired war veterans are the ones thta really fought, which shows thta the more you know of war the more you want never to return to it. I laos liek that at the end of the chapter he likes Lot's wife because she was so human and how he says that we need to stop looking back.