Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Literary Term - Chapter Four: Litotes

In Chapter Four, Billy Pilgrim is aboard a train to a prison in Germany. He finds himself standing by a forty-year-old hobo; he always repeated the phrase "This ain't bad. I can get comfortable anywhere." The phrase ain't bad is a litotes. Litotes is a form of understatement in which the positive form is emphasized through the negation of a negative form. Vonnegut could have said is good instead of ain't bad. By saing ain't bad, Vonnegut still shows that the conditions could be better, but they are good in the eyes of the hobo.

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