The Barbershop Quartet

In Chapter 8, Billy Pilgrim falls to an odd kind of foreshadowing. Although the reader already knows of the plane crash, Pilgrim does not. However, while he is at his and Valencia’s anniversary party, the barbershop quartet that performs on his airplane sings. Their singing causes him to become incredibly uncomfortable, foreshadowing the plane crash. However, Pilgrim still does not know of the crash in that particular moment in time, while the reader does, creating dramatic irony. This is inserted into the story in order to show that Pilgrim did not always possess the ability to see through time directly, although he was able to foreshadow disaster indirectly.