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Postmodern Language In Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five

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Vonnegut‘s way of narration with a clear language is a result of his journalistic experience and also from his pragmatic upbringing. As a journalist, Vonnegut knew that he had to write for certain audience which he had to keep in mind at all times when writing. The pragmatic environment that he grew up in taught Kurt that it is important to be efficient when choosing to do anything. The result of these factors is Vonnegut‘s express and ever present concern that his ideas are perceived and understood by the reader, who, in turn, will hopefully learn something that will help him make the world immediately around him just a little bit better.

Vonnegut’s mastery of diction allowed him to craftily developed characters in a manner that made them and the story they were a part of, seem real. As a narrator of Slaughterhouse-Five Vonnegut writes articulately, …show more content…

Even though Vonnegut isn’t very emotional writer, he simply brings his ideas to the mind of the reader and lets the reader decide how to feel. The tone and diction combined can sometimes make us feel a little sad while reading Slaughterhouse-Five this just because it gives us the impression that nothing really matters and life just ends up being terrible.

Kurt Vonnegut gave us some of the most timeless advice on the art and craft of writing in an essay “How to Write with Style,” published 1985 in the wonderful anthology How to Use the Power of the Printed Word where he describes the most important elements of writing styles:

As for your use of language: Remember that two great masters of language, William Shakespeare and James Joyce, wrote sentences which were almost childlike when their subjects were most profound. ‘To be or not to be?’ asks Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The longest word is three letters long. Joyce, when he was frisky, could put together a

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Throughout Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut intertwines reality and fiction to provide the reader with an anti-war book in a more abstract form. To achieve this abstraction, Kurt Vonnegut utilizes descriptive images, character archetypes, and various themes within the novel. By doing so, he created a unique form of literature that causes the reader to separate reality from falsehood in both their world, and in the world within Vonnegut’s mind. Vonnegut focuses a lot on the characters and their actions in “Slaughterhouse Five.”

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In this Harrison Bergeron’s criticism, it says that freedom remains in the background of the story; however, freedom is no longer a present value in the story. The law makes those who are "above normal'' equal to the ones who are "normal" by handicapping the above-normal individuals. In this criticism, Vonnegut suggests that freedom can be taken away relatively easily; however, freedom can be defined as “lack of restriction”, and in this story is very clear that the society is full of limitations and restrictions. People cannot think if they want to, nor they cannot feel anything. If they want to cry or laugh, they can do it, although when they start doing it, they forget the reason of why they started doing it.

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Title: Slaughterhouse-Five Author: Kurt Vonnegut Thesis: Throughout KVs SF, he describes in matter of fact way the psychological impact/effects of the devastation of war and death upon Billy Pilgrim and how he handles it. Through the exploration of Billy Pilgrim’s detached and indifferent thoughts, Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five illustrates the coping mechanisms of a World War II veteran with post traumatic stress disorder.

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Dresden was one of the world’s most beautiful cities full of life and culture up until the Dresden bombing that destroyed innocent civilian lives and burned the historic town of Dresden to ashes during World War II. The bombings, resulting from the ongoing war is named the worst civilian casualty bombings and the most questioned. The bombs dropped by the Allies were unexplained because the bombs were not aimed at any war material headquarters or at a base of any Axis powers. The Dresden bombings were a catastrophic unnecessary point of attack. In Kurt Vonnegut’s book Slaughterhouse-Five, the Dresden bombings are discussed as well as highly influencing to the book as a whole.

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People are influenced by the events that surround them. Individuals transform into a product of their environment and experiences of the time. The literature and art often reflects the time period in which it is written in, and Vonnegut’s novel is no exception. The novel takes place during World War II, but is written during the time of the Vietnam War. With the Vietnam War, came a lot of anti-war propaganda.

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Post-traumatic stress disorder is a mental disease that develops in those who have experienced a scary or dangerous event and it affects an estimated 6.8% of Americans in their lifetime (National Institute of Mental Health, “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder”). Post-traumatic stress disorder is also abbreviated as “PTSD.” Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut, follows Billy Pilgrim, a World War II soldier, on his adventures through both the war and after the war. Pilgrim believes that he is visited by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore and abducted by them. He also thinks that he is able to “time travel” to different events throughout his own life.

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Trout uses science fiction and its different elements such as cognitive estrangement and structural fabulation in order to build a metaphor that guides the reader into thinking about an aspect of society that the author wants to criticize. This communicative piece intends to portray social criticism in the way Vonnegut does it, but taken to our reality and analyzing aspects we want to condemn. We opened the book on chapter nine and decided to write our own new plot as if Billy Pilgrim was the one reading it. We wrote the text and inserted it as part of the chapter in order to adhere it to the rest of society’s criticism seen in the book in the very best Vonnegut style. In order to interpret Vonnegut’s intentions and purpose of social criticism throughout Slaughterhouse Five, specially in chapter nine, it´s necessary to understand science fiction and its elements.

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The way an author writes can almost be related to the way people talk each other and are very deliberate in the words they choose to say even if it just a sentence. Even a person's tone when talking is similar to the tone in a story but the only difference between the two could be the vocabulary size. Kurt Vonnegut Jr is the author of the story Harrison Bergeron and the story is about a world where everyone is equal in every way beauty, intelligence, strength, speed, and anyone who has a advantage over people is given handicaps to keep the playing field leveled. The message that Vonnegut wants you to take from this is that society is trying to trying to take away qualities that would make you your own individual because with them gone you, become easier to be influenced. Vonnegut dose many purposeful things in this story to give you hints on the message

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The way people lived changed dramatically during the 1930s due to the Great Depression. Many new musicians were founded during this era. There was a huge switch in the music industry and the genres that existed. For example, two of many new genres were introduced throughout the 30s. Hillbilly folk and Western.

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Themes in various amounts of stories can range from love to death. While themes portray the central idea of the story; they figure out the theme of the story you can discover many secrets the author describes throughout the story. In Slaughterhouse Five, the main character as described as “stuck in time” which would make you wonder why. Certainly Vonnegut distributes a variety of literary elements to capture the central theme of the story using setting, conflict, and symbolism to show that time is the theme.

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‘It gives people the wrong impression.’” (Vonnegut 3). This highlights

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Kurt Vonnegut author of slaughterhouse five, in the 1985 essay “How to Write with Style,” makes observations and recommendations for infusing personality into your work. It begins by defining "elements of style" as the unique personal qualities that you show to the reader. Vonnegut then goes on to make an argument on why we should improve our writing style. To which he says it's out of sign of respect for the reader. Basically not putting effort into your writing will make the reader will think that you care little of them.

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1189 Words | 5 Pages

How did Kurt Vonnegut use postmodern approaches to create an antiwar antinovel in Slaughterhouse 5? When Slaughterhouse 5 was published, it could have been considered as an outsider in the literary world. In the midst of the Vietnam war, it was preaching antiwar notions, and in a time where straightforward linear storylines dominated the media, Slaughterhouse 5 presented a challenging nonlinear plot. The nonlinearity in plots would later on become a staple of postmodern literature but Kurt Vonnegut missed the peak of the postmodern era publishing the novel in 1969; a decade before the peak in the 1980's.

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Storytelling has been the epitome of human expression for thousands of years. Along with musicians and artists, talented storytellers use their work to share ideas with others, often in an effort to evoke emotion or to persuade people to think similarly. Every element in a story is carefully crafted by the author in order to communicate a desired message to his or her audience. In Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut incorporates irony into the story to express his belief that fighting wars is illogical.

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Time’s Arrow and Slaughterhouse-Five are both novels with an unconventional approach. By defying the expectation that such writing ought to be sombre, they deliver their own brand of mourning. Vonnegut interweaves the horrors of war with the seemingly trivial and absurd to create greater impact. The language, which is so often blunt and direct to the point of vulgarity, takes on a different character in the darker moments. It is transformed into something more childlike and delicate, suddenly capable of conveying the aftermath of a massacre with simple respect.

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