13) THEMATIC AND STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF HEMINGWAYS A FAREWELL TO ARMS INTRODUCTION A Farewell to Arms was written in 1929 and

was based on the authors own war experience: Hemingway was a volunteer in the Italian army during WWI. The novels protagonists, Frederick and Catherine, meet during the war, fall in love, and wish to opt out, but Catherine dies at child birth. The novel has a dramatic structure: it is written mostly in dialogue, and is divided into five books which correspond to the five acts of traditional drama. Moreover, it resembles ancient tragedy. THE MAJOR THEMES IN THE NOVEL ARE: War As the title of the novel makes clear, A Farewell to Arms concerns itself primarily with war, namely the process by which Frederic Henry removes himself from it and leaves it behind. This war novel takes place in Italy during World War I, and the lives of all the characters are marked by the war. Most of the characters, from Henry and Catherine down to the soldiers and shop owners whom Henry meets, are humanists who echo Hemingways view that war is senseless waste of life. Thus, the majority of the characters remain ambivalent about the war, resentful of the terrible destruction it causes, doubtful of the glory it supposedly brings. The few characters that support the war are presented as zealots to be either feared, as is the case of the military police, or pitied, such as the young Italian patriot Gino. The novel offers masterful descriptions of the conflicts senseless brutality and violent chaos: the scene of the Italian armys retreat remains one of the most profound evocations of war in American literature. As the neat columns of men begin to crumble, so too do the soldiers nerves, minds, and capacity for rational thought and moral judgment. Henrys shooting of the engineer for refusing to help free the car from the mud shocks the reader for two reasons: first, the violent outburst seems at odds with Henrys coolly detached character; second, the incident occurs in a setting that robs it of its moral importthe complicity of Henrys fellow soldiers legitimizes the killing. The murder of the engineer seems justifiable because it is an inevitable by-product of the spiraling violence and disorder of the war. To Henry, the war is, at first, a necessary evil from which he distracts himself through drinking and sex. By the end of the novel, his experiences of the war have convinced him that it is a fundamentally unjust atrocity, which he seeks to escape at all costs with Catherine. Nevertheless, the novel cannot be said to condemn the war; A Farewell to Arms is hardly the work of a pacifist. War is depicted as an inevitable outcome of a cruel, senseless world. Hemingway suggests that war is nothing more than the dark, murderous extension of a world that refuses to acknowledge, protect, or preserve true love. The Relationship Between Love, Loss and Pain Against the backdrop of war, Hemingway offers a deep, mournful meditation on the nature of love. No sooner does Catherine announce to Henry that she is in mourning for her dead fianc than she begins a game meant to seduce Henry. Her reasons for doing so are clear: she wants to distance herself from the pain of her loss. Likewise, Henry intends to get as far away from talk of the war as possible. In each other, Henry and Catherine find temporary solace from the things that plague them, despite the Henrys aversion to falling in love. The couples feelings for each other quickly pass from an amusement that distracts them to the very fuel that sustains them. Henrys understanding of how meaningful his love for Catherine is, outweighs any consideration for the emptiness of abstract ideals such as honor, enabling him to flee the war and seek her out. Reunited, they plan an idyllic life together that promises to act as a salve for the damage that the

war has inflicted. Far away from the decimated Italian countryside, each intends to be the others refuge. If they are to achieve physical, emotional, and psychological healing, they have found the perfect place in the safe remove of the Swiss mountains. The tragedy of the novel rests in the fact that their love, even when genuine, can never be more than temporary in this world, and is always surrounded by loss throughout the whole novel: the loss of Catherines former lover, the foreshadowing of the loss Henry will have to live with at the novels end, when Catherine dies in childbirth, etc. PLOT STRUCTURE ANALYSIS The plot in this novel is circular: in the beginning of the novel, Henry has no one and at the end, he is alone. The first chapter begins with the reported death of seven thousand soldiers and the last chapter deals with death too. The note of somberness created in the first chapter is carried throughout the novel, crystallizing at the end. Hemingway once called A Farewell to Arms his Romeo and Juliet. The resemblance goes deeper than the fact that both tell tragic love stories. Both works are constructed along the same lines. A Shakespearean tragedy has five acts that work out the plot in a standard pattern: 1. introduction; 2. complication; 3. climax; 4. resolution; 5. conclusion. As the acts progress toward the conclusion, they get shorter, the fifth often being half the length of the first. Additionally, each act is divided into a number of scenes. The scenes are usually short. Very often they are like miniature stories, the sum of all the stories making up the entire play. Hemingway builds his novel in much the same way. It consists of five books, arranged in the same introduction-to-conclusion pattern. Book I introduces us to the major characters and to the book's setting, war-torn Italy. Book II provides complications in the form of Frederic's growing love for Catherine, his wounding, and her pregnancy. The climax of the novel comes in Book III, when the disastrous retreat at Caporetto and his near-execution by the carabinieri completely change Henry's attitude toward the war. Book IV achieves a seemingly happy resolution as the lovers escape to Switzerland; but like Romeo and Juliet, the story concludes in tragedy in Book V, when Catherine dies in childbirth. Book I goes on for twelve chapters, Book V for only three. Most of the chapters, moreover, have what can be called a dramatic structure. Typically, a chapter will open with the establishment of the setting, frequently a short description. Then the actors arrive. Their conversation often points toward a revelation of character, a promise of action. Finally there is a conclusion, often a terse statement. Themes and Style in Toni Morrisons The Bluest Eye The Bluest Eye is Toni Morrisons first novel written between 1962 and 1968 in New York City, and published in 1970. It contains a number of autobiographical elements. It is set in the town where Morrison grew up (Lorain, Ohio), and it is told from the point of view of a nine-year-old, which is the age Morrison would have been in the year 1941. Like the MacTeer family, Morrisons family was poor during the Great Depression. Morrison grew up listening to her mother singing and her grandfather playing the violin, just as Claudia does. In the novels afterword, Morrison explained that the story developed out of a conversation she had had in elementary school with a little girl, who longed for blue eyes. She was still thinking about this conversation in the 1960s, when the Black is Beautiful movement was working to reclaim African-American beauty, and she began her first novel. Because of the controversial nature of the book, which deals with racism, incest, and child abuse, there have been numerous attempts to ban it from schools and libraries. Style

The story is about a year in the life of a young black girl, named Pecola. It is told from the perspective of Claudia MacTeer as a child and as an adult, as well as from a third-person, omniscient viewpoint. Morrison is famous for her use of fragmented narrative with multiple perspectives. She alters between first-person and third-person omniscient which makes the narrative more inclusive, giving rural, less-educated characters the opportunity to describe their own experience in their own language. The tone of the novel is colloquial. The narrative is divided into 4 parts and each part is named after a season beginning with autumn: I part-Autumn, 3 chapters; II part-Winter, 2 chapters; III part-Spring, 4 chapters; IV part-Summer, 2 chapters; Themes Whiteness as a beauty standard Implicit messages that whiteness is superior are everywhere, starting from the white baby doll given to Claudia, and the idealization of Shirley Temple. Claudia explains that she has always hated Shirley Temple and also the blonde, blue-eyed baby doll that she was given for Christmas. She is confused about why everyone else thinks such dolls are lovable, and she pulls apart her doll trying to discover where its beauty is located. Everyone agreed that light-skinned Maureen is cuter than the other black girls. Even Pauline Breedlove prefers the little white girl she works for over her daughter. Pecola hates her ugliness, which makes teachers and classmates ignore her. For a long time, she has hoped and prayed for blue eyes, which will make her beautiful. She connects beauty with being loved and believes that if she has blue eyes, the cruelty in her life will be replaced by affection and respect. This hopeless desire leads her at the end to madness. When blacks reject their own racial identity, the result is either self-loathing or hatred. Sexual Initiation and Abuse The Bluest Eye deals both with the pleasures and the perils of sexual initiation. Early in the novel, Pecola has her first menstrual period, and toward the novels end she has her first sexual experience, which is violent. Also, Mr. Henry has sexual interests in Frieda. We are told the story of Chollys first sexual experience, which ends when two white men force him to have sex while they watch. Chollys rape of his own daughter, Pecola is, in a sense, a repetition of the sexual humiliation he experienced under the gaze of two racist whites. Cholly definitely loves but he manifests his love in violent ways. Even though love can be distorted, Morrison makes the point that everyone can in fact love. Even evil persons who love in an evil manner can still love. As Claudia points out in the final chapter, "Love is never any better than the lover. Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly." The Power of Seeing and Being Seen

The theme of seeing and being seen is repeated throughout the novel. In the beginning, when the reader first learns about Claudia and Frieda and how Pecola came to be living with them, there is a lot of emphasis on the normal relationship between parents and children in the black household. The children are given orders by the adults. They are taught to obey even when they do not know what is going on. The children are protected by the adults by being excluded from certain kinds of information so as to maintain childrens innocence. The adults have the power of choosing to see

or not see a child, to give attention or not. However, the children have no way of seeing the adults. They can watch their actions, and they do; however, they do not have the power of maturity to understand. For instance, when Mr. Henry comes to live with the MacTeers, he acknowledges the presence of the children and plays with them. This is significant to the children and they feel special because he sees them, gives them his attention. Later the reader learns that Mr. Henry has sexual interests in Frieda. The children learn the cost of being seen can be sexual exploitation. Seeing, without delusion, is rare in this novel where just about everyone is deluded into believing a reality that does not exist. The children can be forgiven because their immaturity explains why they cannot understand. However, the adults seem to have a permanent inability to see the everyday exploitation to which they are subject. Quest Pecola's Quest for Her Own Identity: The Breedlove family is a group of people under the same roof, a family by name only. Cholly the head person of the family is always drunk and an abusive man. His abusive is apparent towards his wife and daughter. He abuses his wife Pauline physically and his daughter Pecola sexually. Pauline works as a "mammy" in a white family and prefers to favor them over her biological family. Pecola is a little black girl with low self-esteem. The world had forced her to believe that she is ugly and she must have blue eyes, if she wants to look beautiful. Therefore, every night she prays before sleeping that she will wake up with blue eyes. She was brought up as a poor unwanted girl in the society. But Pecola always desired the acceptance and love of society. The image of 'Shirely Temple Beauty' surrounds her. The idea that she must have blue eyes, if she wants to look beautiful has been imprinted on Pecola her whole life. Pecola always thinks, "if I looked different, beautiful, maybe Cholly would be different, and Mrs. Breedlove too. Maybe they would say, "Why look at pretty eyed Pecola. We must not do bad things in front of those pretty blue eyes". Thus, she was mad after blue eyes. Many factors have helped imprint this ideal of beauty on her. She was always treated badly by many people in her surroundings. Mr. Yacowbski avoids seeing her and treats her as if she were invisible. "He does not see her, because for him there is nothing to see". Her classmates also have an effect on her. They seem to think that because she is not beautiful, there is nothing worthy in her, she is useless. In this way, she becomes the focal point of their mockery. They used to shout at her saying "Black e mo, black e mo". Not only children, but adults also had to mock at her. Geraldine, a white woman always refused to tolerate "niggers". Once, seeing Pecola in her house Geraldine started shouting at her, "You nastily little black bitch. Get out of my house". Thus, Pecola was never able to get away from this kind of ridicule. At home also she had to face the same thing. One day Pecola was visiting her mother at the home where she is working. Accidently there she knocked over a blueberry pie and burned by the hot pastry. But Pecola's mother completely ignored her feelings of pain and instead continued the comforting of her white "daughter". For a little girl, the love of her mother is the most important love she can receive. But this hunger of love was never fulfilled by her mother. Finally, the rape by her father is the last evidence Pecola needs to believe completely that she is an ugly unlovable girl. Generally, a father figure is one who little girls look to for guidance and approval, but Cholly, Pecola's father is the exact opposite. Cholly hurts Pecola badly instead of loving her and takes away from her the one thing that was completely hers. After the rape, Pecola was so sad to see, and she went insane. Pecola's quest for identity was defined by her everlasting desire to be loved. Her purpose in life was to be beautiful and to be loved, but her family and the community made it impossible for her. Thus, Pecola failed to set up her own identity in the society. Cholly Breedlove's Quest for Identity: Cholly Breedlove, the father of Pecola also lacked his individual identity and self-esteem. He was born to an unwed mother. His father ran away the day

of his birth. This horrible beginning of his life reflects in his everyday actions and in his views. His mother also left him alone in the world. Another major cause of Cholly's downfall was the way the community treated him. They never respected him, and talked about him behind his back. In this way, the community made a mockery of his name. However, Cholly's ultimate downfall occurs simultaneously with the rape of Pecola. Thus, with that act, Cholly lost all humanity conceivable and his search for himself ended in destruction. Pauline Breedlove's Quest for Identity: Pauline Breedlove, the mother of Pecola is another example of the embodiment of 'the quest for identity'. She feels truly happy when she works for the white family. It is there and there only that she feels as if she is a part of something valuable. In her search for her identity and happiness, she learned the difference between herself and the rest of the society. At the same time, the movie theatre helped her realize the clear difference between her and other women. Then Pauline learned about the physical beauty and also learned for what it stood. In those days, physical beauty was the ideal of Shirely Temple beauty, the equation of blond hair and blue eyes to beauty. The Shirely Temple beauty signified happiness, equality, worthiness, and overall comfort. As Pauline learned these qualities, she got a job as a black "mammy" in a white family. Then she felt as if she was a part of all these qualities, when she was in the company of her white family. On the contrary, the more she lived with her own black family, the more she realized how ugly, poor and unworthy they were. After that, Pauline mentally left her family in place of her "perfect life". However, she fails to realize that by committing herself to a servant's life, she will remain only a black servant in a white world. Analysis of O'Neill's ''The Great God Brown'': Structure, Theme(s), Characters, Symbols The play ''The Great God Brown'' was written in 1926 by Eugene O'Neill. It belongs to the genre of tragedy where we can see the influence of European expressionists such as Strinberg and Nietzche. In his work ''The Birth of Tragedy'', Nietzche explains the concept of tragedy as the most sublime form of art which describes the gap between one's aspiration and one's achievement. So O'Neill resurrects the classical tragedy and adds elements of modernism to create a new style where struggle gives nobility to life. The Great God Brown presents a penetrating study of the inner workings of the human psyche as it struggles to cope with betrayal, failure, and a search for identity. The play introduces the classical element of a mask which O'Neill based on Jung's interpretation of a persona as a social mask which we all put on in order to survive. The mask stands as a symbol of hiding one's instincts, personality and one's authentic self. In the larger sphere of form The Great God Brown: is a work of art, with a beginning, a middle and an end, with character development, and with a penetrating criticism of life. By predicating the tragedy with a prologue that introduces the parents of the main characters, and by appending to it an epilogue, Mr. ONeill gives his play the sweep of universality and the continuity of successive generations. William A. Brown and Dion Anthony are the sons of business partners and will soon take over the business. Both men love Margaret but she chooses Dion, although it is not the real Dion she elects, not the tortured, sensitive, and artistic Dion but rather the Dion of the mocking, cynical mask. Indeed, when Dion briefly removes his mask in a moment of ecstatic passion, Margaret is revolted. Dion retires from the business partnership, fails in his attempt to become a painter, returns as Brown's employee, but soon withers and dies. Taking Dion's mask, Brown also takes his place as Margaret's husband, until the deception is revealed. By that time the real, inner Brown has languished. When Brown is accused of murdering his true self, only the prostitute, Cybel, who wears no mask, comforts him. Years after both men's deaths, Margaret looks back and swears eternal love to Dion, or at least to Dion's mask.

The main theme of an American Dream is explored throughout the play, where we have a story about modern Americans whose main goal is the material success and where a true artist has to hide himself behind a mask. All the male characters turn into other faces of the god Dionysus in search for liberating the self. Pan and Apollo are all different faces of Dionysus. Billy Brown is depicted as an Apollo. He is in the prime of his adolescence and vigor. A typical tall, handsome, blue-eyed American , the embodiment of the American dream and he himself doesnt wear a mask because he is already the mask, his personality has conformed to the requests of society. Like Apollo, he enjoys sight, reason, form and beauty. The powerful, well-off Billy is, tragically, not successful with girls and cannot fight to win the love of Margaret; the only girl he desires. On the other hand, Dion is a typical Pan. He is presented as a stranger to himself and wears a mask from the beginning. Unmasked, Dion's face appears dark, spiritual, poetic, passionately unprotected but a mask shows a sensual and cynic Dion. His are all features of an individual renouncing the modern era of materialism. He stands as a symbol of passion and an unfulfilled artist who because he couldnt adjust to the society inevitably became self destructive. Compared to Dion, Margaret first appears masked with an exact almost "transparent reproduction of her own features, but giving her the abstract quality of a Girl instead of the individual MARGARET. " The quality of a Girl' is Margaret's seductive mask of innocence and love. A mask of a typical girl in love with the exaggerated version of Billy, and that is Dion. Cybel who wears a mask of a prostitute is actually the symbol of Mother Earth and in the end she discloses that Billy and Dion are two sides of one person which cannot live separated from each other and their unity would only bring death. Billy and Dion, representing passion and reason,are symbolic of every man.

The Sound and the Fury Caddy, although not represented directly with her thoughts and feelings, is the central figure in this novel; she is the figure of a twentieth-century girl lost between tradition and freedom. Southern tradition which worshipped womans purity has become too weak and too empty to support her. In her and her daughters fate Faulkner has centered the theme of dislocation of love which is basic to the whole novel. The two women get lost because they are unable to focus and define their love. It is love out of balance or a disproportion of love, of the ability to love or to accept love, which is at the root of the familys decline. Three of the novels four sections take place on or around Easter, 1928. Faulkners placement of the novels climax on this weekend is significant, as the weekend is associated with Christs crucifixion on Good Friday and resurrection on Easter Sunday. Some critics have characterized Benjy as a Christ figure, as Benjy was born on Holy Saturday and is currently thirty-three, the same age as Christ at the crucifixion. Interpreting Benjy as a Christ figure has a variety of possible implications. Benjy may represent the impotence of Christ in the modern world and the need for a new Christ figure to emerge. Alternatively, Faulkner may be implying that the modern world has failed to recognize Christ in its own midst. Though the Easter weekend is associated with death, it also brings the hope of renewal and resurrection. Though the Compson family has fallen, Dilsey represents a source of hope. Dilsey is herself somewhat of a Christ figure. She has constantly tolerated Mrs. Compsons self-pity, Jasons cruelty, and Benjys frustrating incapacity. While the Compsons crumble around her, Dilsey emerges as the only character who has successfully resurrected the values that the Compsons have long abandonedhard work, endurance, love of family, and religious faith.

The affirmation of Afro-American people in Baraka and Morrisons work One of the most important themes in the 20th century American history is the struggle of the black people for their human and social rights. They have been condemned to the life of slavery for many centuries and it was not until the American Civil War (1861-1865) that the era of slavery was officially over. However, even after the equal rights for all were acknowledged, legalized equal rights for the black people were denied in practice. The works of Amiri Baraka and Toni Morrison deal with problems of African-American individual and communal identity. Formerly known as Everett LeRoy Jones, Amiri Baraka was born in 1934 in Newark, New Jersey. He is an American writer of poetry, fiction, drama, essays and music (jazz) criticism, a social critic and university professor. After Black Muslim leader Malcom X was assassinated in 1965, Baraka turned his back on the white society completely. He divorced his white wife, changed his name into a Muslim name Amiri Baraka, became a black nationalist, moved to Harlem, the center of black cultural life, and dedicated himself to black culture through art. His harsh criticism of constant discrimination of Afro-American people in the USA passed the borders of the criticism and gradually became hate towards the white people. He wrote plays and poetry in which he openly stated that blacks are better than whites, and that whites are naturally evil. His essays also became extremely violent. In Home is a social essay in which he says that the black artists role is to aid in the destruction of America Many of his plays were presented in black-only theatres. One of the most famous works of his is Dutchman. In this play, he portrayed white societys fear of an educated black protagonist. Baraka also founded the Black Arts Repertory Theatre in Harlem (1965). He saw poetry as a weapon of action and it is not unexpected that such a poet-warrior causes much controversy in the contemporary world. Among the black women writers, the most prominent one is Toni Morrison, born in 1931, another African-American writer whose work deals with black experience and celebrates black community. Her famous novels are The Bluest Eye, Sula, Tar Baby, Beloved etc. In 1993 she became the first African-American to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. Her work deals with the question of race, heritage and identity. Morrisons primary thematic concern is the issue of a female identity in the contemporary world. Her stories are conscious of African cultural heritage, as well as of history; her works have plenty of cultural allusions, raise a question of black peoples art, languages, religion, and mythology and so on. She employs the strong element of black English in her dialogue and narration to emphasize the importance of language for ones identity. Toni Morrison also wrote essays such as Unspeakable Things Unspoken, Rootedness, Memory in which she wrote passionately in the defense of black women and the heritage of the black people. Her work is considered to be outstanding for its poetic language that is rich with mythic elements, sharp observation and compassion. The contribution of Amiri Baraka and Toni Morrison is great because of their struggle to save the black peoples heritage and tradition from disappearing in spite of the oppression of the powerful whites. Above all, they helped their people unify and strengthen, rediscover their history and develop faith in themselves.

Realism and fantasy in Slaughterhouse Five If we take a look on the title page of the novel we will be introduced to a kind of preface in which the author makes a humorous self-presentation as a fourth generation German-American, now living in easy circumstances, who as a soldier and as a prisoner of war witnessed the fire bombing of Dresden and survived to tell the tale. Based on these lines we could assume that the author has the intention of relating his own experiences in a work with biographical

characteristics. However, the next paragraph mentioning an alien planet and flying saucers raises question whether the book is in fact fantastic. As the author puts it this is a novel somewhat in the telegraphic schizophrenic manner of tales of the planet Tralfamadore, where flying saucers come from peace. This schism of story telling may also refer to the novels division on its realistic and fantastic parts, i.e. the novels represents a mix of elements of reality and fantasy, shifting constantly from one to another. As previously mentioned, Slaughterhouse Five is a mixture of fact and fantasy, of historical world and its alternative one of planet Tralfamadore. These two plans make the narrative world of the novel. When it comes to the realistic level of the novel, we could start by quoting the authors statement: All this happened, more or less, the war parts anyway are pretty true. Chapters One and Ten fictionalize some facts of the authors life, functioning as a frame for Billy Pilgrim, the main character in the novel. The Author begins with his musing of his personal habits, reminiscing of his college days, thinking of his marriage, and then he shifts to telling of his experiences in the Second World War and his attempts to organize them into a story of destruction of Dresden. At this moment the author introduces the historical level, based on historical events and facts. Namely, the author took part in the Second World War and was in Dresden as a prisoner of war, witnessing the firebombing of the city and its destruction. In Chapter Ten he tells of his visiting Dresden with his war friend many years after the war, in 1967 and resumes the description of events in the factual world like the death of Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and his own father and the war in Vietnam. As it was previously mentioned, the story of authors personal life, experiences and real events is set as a kind of frame for the novels central character and his story Billy Pilgrims live and his war experiences The novels main characters fictionalized war experiences are paralleled with the authors participation in the war. The story of Billy Pilgrim is also set in the realistic plane, including time and setting, mainly during the Second World War and in the postwar years. However, it is exactly the story of Billy Pilgrim that introduces the fantastic elements in the novel. After a plane crash that nearly killed him, Billy starts writing letters to local newspapers and radio stations that he was kidnapped to an alien planet called Tralfamadore by its small green inhabitants, and where he was displayed in a zoo. He says that it was there where he learned that all moments in a persons life exist simultaneously and that best philosophy is to enjoy the good moments and ignore the bad ones. The Tralfamadorian philosophy deprives death of its finality, because it affirms that a person only appears to die, but still lives in other moments. All moments past, present and future, always have existed and always will. Another important element of fantasy that also goes with the character of Billy Pilgrim is time travel. Billy is constantly being hurled through time and space, without being warned first. One moment he is in his birth town, than in Germany during the Second World War, and the next on Tralfamadore. The narrator explains this state of Billys in these words; Billy is spastic in time, has no control over when he is going next, He is in a constant state of stage fright, not knowing what part of his life he is going to relive. We could say that this state represents the aforementioned Tralfamadorian philosophy of simultaneous moments in life put in practice. All this was suggested in the very beginning of the narration of his adventures through opening lines that say: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time. Billy has gone to sleep a senile widower and awakened on his wedding day. He has seen his birth and death many times. The last sentence refers to, and in a way foreshadows, the event in 1976 when he gets killed by a gunman hired by one of his war fellow combatants. However, Billy is dead only for a few moments, and then gets back to life to a period in 1944. Billy Pilgrim also relives the same episodes of his life more than

once, which indicates the recurrence of events in an endless cyclical pattern, negating the chronological concept of time. This kind of pattern is announced as early as in the beginning when the author tells of the song he remembers: My name is Yon Yonson, I work in Wisconsin, I work in a lumber mill there, The people I meet when I walk down the street, They say 'What's your name?' And I say, 'My name is Yon Yonson, I work in Wisconsin...' And so on to infinity, as the author adds. This foreshadowed what is known as the regressus in infinitum that also gets to be the structural pattern of the novel, and above all of the Billy Pilgrims story and its fantastic plane and elements.