Chapter 10: Dead Metaphor

"But the the bodies rotted and liquified, and the stink was like roses and mustard gas."

     Vonnegut repeatedly used the metaphor of "roses and mustard gas" throughout his story. This dead metaphor compared breath, dead corpses, and other things to mustard gas and roses. The bodies after the bombing began to smell as well as Vonnegut's breath when he was drunk. This comparison related smells to something that was deadly and horrific as well as something that was romantic, fancy, and fragrant. This contradiction of smell was able to nurture the idea that the smell was bad, but familiar in a sense. Vonnegut creatively used this dead metaphor to relate parts of his story together.