Epigraph

Epigraphs are those enigmatic sayings appearing on the first page of a book or chapter.  In my first two novels I copied quotations from within each chapter and created epigraphs to give a hint of the upcoming scenes.  I formatted each quote as a Heading in Word and used them for the book's index.  As I stated in an earlier post, the index quotes were to pique prospective buyers' interest and entice them to purchase my book.

The epigraphs in Slogans: Our Children, Our Future were different.  In keeping with the book's title I discovered slogans and mottoes to identify each chapter's theme.  Since history is rich with slogans touting all manner of empty promises, it was easy to find the right words to match my need.

Not satisfied with introducing each chapter with an epigraph, I decided to add a short moral story to set the chapter's mood.  These stories were a mixture of fables, folk lore, fairy tales, myths and excerpts.  My sources ranged from Aesop's Fables and Grimm's fairy tales to Orwell's Animal Farm and the Bible.  When I first started I did not realize I would need fifty-four of them.  By chapter sixteen I was running out of ideas and decided to scrap them.  However, my beta readers said they looked forward to the shorts and convinced me to retain them.  If some of the stories seem like a stretch, it's because they are.

Aesop was the source for many of fables

The toughest chapter to write was forty-nine, "To Serve and Protect."  Since I was old enough to understand, I heard the story of my paternal grandmother's death from cold and starvation.  It wasn't too much later that I associated her story with the Little Match Girl. 

Hans Christian Anderson's Little Match Girl

During the mid-fifties, Hans Christian Anderson's tale played on Chicago television as a Christmas special .  Our black and white set vividly showed the poor little girl desperately lighting her matches to ward off freezing.  It was heart wrenching enough to watch the girl, but in her story I also saw my Russian grandmother, moy russkiy babka.

This is a version of the show I watched.   I still can't watch it with dry eyes.