Chapter 9

The whole novel is full of allusions, but the one that stood out was in chapter nine. Vonnegut references to a letter by Harry S. Truman: "One of the things Rumfoord had told Lily to get in Boston was a copy of President Harry S. Truman's announcement to the world that an atomic bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima" (185). The reason why it stood out to me was that I had just learned about the atomic bomb this past year in U.S. History. It also was an important letter to the American people. Also in chapter nine, Billy's wife dies. Billy and five other Americans also return to Dresden two days after the bomb to collect souvenirs from war.