What’s Up With the Epigraph?

Epigraphs are like little appetizers to the great main dish of a story. They illuminate important aspects of the story, and they get us headed in the right direction.

There's no epigraph for the overall book, but there's an epigraph for each part, including the prologue and epilogue.

The preface has an epigraph by George Seferis from the poem "Return of the Exile." The poem is about returning to a land of childhood, but it's also about death. So it's a cheery start to the book.

Part One has an epigraph from Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, which is… wait for it… a haunted house story.

There are two epigraphs for Part Two. One is from Wallace Stevens's poem The Emperor of Ice Cream, which is about (you guessed it) death. The other is a haiku by George Seferis, which is… about death. Do you sense a pattern?

There are three epigraphs for Part Three. The first is from the song "Endless Sleep," most famously recorded by Jody Reynolds in 1958. That's a song about death. The second epigraph is from Edgar Allan Poe's "The Haunted Palace," which compares a house to a man gone mad. The third epigraph is from a Bob Dylan song called "North Country Blues," which is about a deserted town.

The Epilogue has two epigraphs from George Seferis. The first is from the poem "Mythistorema." The second is a complete short poem.