Chapter 2 - Poet in the Parthenon

   "His head was tilted back and his nostrils were flaring.  He was like a poet in the Parthenon"

      Vonnegut uses this simile to reveal the first time Billy Pilgrim became unstuck in time.  Billy was ready to quit.  His exhaustion was starting to get the best of him, and he felt that he could no longer go on.  At this moment, Vonnegut describes Billy's experience as "swinging grandly through the full of his life.  I find Billy's experience to be similar to that of a person who's life 'flashes before their eyes' when near death.  Trying to understand why Vonnegut would pair this experience with the simile "like a poet in the Parthenon," I did a quick search.  My information lead me to another "poet in the Parthenon," John Keats.  After viewing images from the Parthenon, Keats formed a basis for the poem "Ode on a Grecian Urn."  The poem had similar characteristics to whole idea behind Slaughterhouse-Five.  
          "What little town by river or sea shore/ is emptied of this folk/ the pious morn?/ And little town thy streets forever more will be silent/ and not a soul to tell/ why thou art so desolate/ can e'er return."  Dresden, a little town by the shore, was also emptied of it's folks during the bombing, and they too will forever morn. So it goes.