My son posed a wonderful question to me as I was reading him his
bedtime story, "why do books have chapters"? I told him that I didn't
know. Perhaps it is to break up the story, and make it easier to read.
Perhaps it is to separate the subjects, parts, scenes, being written
about.
I searched on Google, and found that originally
writing was done on scrolls, and when the scrolls were transformed into
books, the individual scrolls became individual chapters in the books.
Perhaps
now it is a way to indicate the pieces that go together to form a whole
and complete idea; each chapter being an individual piece of Lego,
assembled in a specific order by the author, to form a specific work.
The same book, with the same chapters, assembled in a different order,
would form a completely different work. Perhaps the chapters, like
scenes in a movie or a play, are whole ideas, and the book is the
collected ideas' interplay.
Why do books have chapters? Old habit...still useful today.
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