~ Slaughterhouse-Five, page 215
This reminded me of another lovely book I read a couple years ago - The Notebook!
So both of these books contain a technique that I find particularly effective. Both use the repetition of a phrase or moment in the novel (repeated as the last line in the book) to convey some sort of message.
In Slaughterhouse-Five, the line "poo-tee-weet" is repeated to emphasize the senselessness of death and massacre - it takes that catharsis Billy just experienced and proves that the actions causing that were totally pointless and in no way beneficial.
In The Notebook, the first line of a preceding scene are repeated (sorry, I can't remember the exact phrase) to convey the miraculous power of love and the perseverance in the relationship between the two protagonists, Allie and Noah, despite current struggles of Alzheimer's disease.
Undoubtedly, I was very excited when I read the end of the book to discover the connection between these two novels. Thematically, the books are extremely different, but this technique is present in both.
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