Memory/Memory Loss

Christine considered her memory to be “a core part of my identity and intelligence” (44), and the loss was a symbol of how the stroke affected her on more than just a physical level. She wrote at length about the fact that life goes on, even when a person forgets things.

Slaughterhouse Five

Slaughterhouse Five is the Kurt Vonnegut novel that Christine was trying to read when she had the stroke. Finally, she put the book down when she realized that she was reading the same few lines over and over. When she began reading it again a year later, she discovered the the narrator is not the protagonist of the novel, but that Billy Pilgrim is introduced in the second chapter with the line, “Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time” (227). There is a parallel between Christine and this character, because she talked at length...