Magical Realism In Slaughterhouse Five Analysis
4.9. Magical realism and Science fiction elements in Slaughterhouse-Five
In this chapter we are going to elaborate elements of magical realism and science fiction as a part ofthe narrative mode of Slaughterhouse-Five. Kurt Vonnegut 's Slaughterhouse -Five is difficult to categorize, it may be a science fiction novel or we might call it partial magical realism.
According to Maggie Ann Bowers magical realism is a term introduced in the 1940s referring to a narrative mode, genres or forms of writing that presents extra ordinary occurrences as an ordinary part of everyday reality. Magical realism has become a popular narrative mode because it offers to the writer wishing to write against totalitarian regimes a means to attack the definitions and assumptions which support such systems by attacking the stability of the definitions upon which these systems rely. It is typical for books and essays on magical realism to begin by stating that the concept and its history are too complex to be able to provide a definition.
Vonnegut’s Billy Piligrim in Slaughterhouse-Five represent a curiously American pragmatic expression of magical realism, a fatalist sense that its presence is part of the weight and inevitability of destiny. Perhaps in this way Vonnegut’s work
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However, science fiction is as difficult term as magical realism, so to provide an adequate distinction between the two forms relies upon a certain degree of acknowledgement of the slipperiness of the modes and their terms and definitions. One of the characteristics of science fiction that distinguishes it from magical realism is its requirement of a rational, physical explanation for any unusual
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