Slaughterhouse-Five Postmodern Narrative Analysis
Introduction
They say that history is written by winners, whereas World War II is the best example of how history is shaped to favor its winners. Vonnegut in Slaughterhouse-Five unfolded the other side of war that history usually neglects.
Most of us had a chance to learn about WWII in our history classes, from John Wayne movies or from historical books. Whereas what distinguishes Slaughterhouse-Five from what we used to read about war its Vonnegut’s representation of real experiences that he had actually lived while he was a soldier, prisoner and survivor of WWII. Vonnegut achieved to write a book about consequences of the war, especially how the war can effect in the human psychic ability and the way how these people cope with reality long after the war
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Some of the major postmodern narrative techniques used in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five are: metaficion, non-linear narration, intertextuality, irony and minimalism.
My Master thesis will be divided into five major chapters apart from this one. The first chapter presents an overview of Kurt Vonnegut’s life and his works. This chapter provides a biographical account of the author’s life, which plays an important part in understanding the nature and characteristics of his novels. In addition this chapter also discusses the importance of Kurt Vonnegut in American Literature and the most prominent critical opinions on Kurt Vonnegut and in Slaughterhouse-Five.
In the next chapter I will try to define postmodernism and its characteristics that are presented in Vonnegut’s novels.
The third chapter will be a short introduction to a story of Slaughterhouse-Five, what makes it unique and Vonnegut’s difficulties and circumstances to write it. The next part of this chapter deals with the narrator and his point of
Billy Pilgrim Quotes Analysis
1055 Words | 5 PagesSlaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut, is a postmodern, anti war novel, involving the main character, Billy Pilgrim, and his transportation through the different moments of his life. The timeline of this particular book ranges all the way from when Billy was a small boy and all the way to his death. Because of the book taking place in many different times of Billy’s life and in many places of it, Kurt Vonnegut both hides and reveals truth in it. Many examples of this can be found throughout the events of Billy’s adventures, most notably before and during the fire bombings of Dresden.
Protagonists In Slaughterhouse-Five, Frankenstein, And The Bloody Chamber
968 Words | 4 PagesIn order to convey a message author sometimes breaks away from the traditional way of portraying a protagonist. They do this to maybe go against other books written within the same genre or to make them stand out. Some books that have exhibited this characteristic are; Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, and the fairy tale The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter. In each of these stories, the author creates a protagonist that goes against the norms of the genre.
Archetypes In Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five
930 Words | 4 PagesThrough the use of characterization, an immense amount of novels are able to satirize and symbolize different types of people. In Kurt Vonnegut’s novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, this technique is applied in many instances within the novel. The main character Billy Pilgrim symbolizes the common man, and everything about him, including his name, contributes to this representation. In this deftly written novel, the author deliberately chooses the minor characters as the embodiments of different archetypes. Valencia portrays the average housewife and the general unhappiness of married couples.
Juxtaposition In Slaughterhouse-Five
1039 Words | 5 PagesVonnegut as the author and narrator of the novel removes the doubt in the first chapter that not everything we read in Slaughterhouse-Five is true through the first words of the novel: “All this happened, more or less.” This opening line introduce the readers with Vonnegut story mixed with real and fictional events, a future which is blurred by past, time jumps from inner space and outer space and even human ethics verses extraterrestrial morals. Vonnegut managed to create a collision of these strange juxtaposition with true historical events narrated in an ironical voice. Victorious and glorious historical events such as “The Florence on the Elbe”, Sodom and Gomorrah down to WWII are portrayed with a humble language and through multidimensional
Slaughterhouse Five Thesis
288 Words | 2 PagesTitle: 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.
Irony In Kurt Vonnegut's 'Slaughterhouse Five'
1076 Words | 5 PagesStorytelling 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.
Slaughterhouse-Five Rhetorical Analysis
436 Words | 2 PagesVonnegut use of existentialist detachment can be used to describe the tone of Slaughterhouse-Five. The novel is fragmented into miniscule sections. The majorities of these sections is rather thrilling and contain much action, thus the narrator does not give himself ample room to become emotional regarding the events he is concerning. Therefore, it is difficult to understand what type of emotional meaning the narrator is endeavoring to communicate. The narrator detaches himself from events, then, does not get emotional, consequently the novel is spoken in a straightforward means.
Archetypes In Slaughterhouse Five
673 Words | 3 PagesThroughout 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.”
The Pros And Cons Of Slaughterhouse-Five
1478 Words | 6 PagesSlaughterhouse-Fives’s is a mixture of two genres. It is an anti-war novel with science fiction elements. The book’s plot follows the protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, as he travels through time and lives through World War Two as an American soldier. While book is highly praised by critics, some find the book to be crude and inappropriate. However, the numbers don’t lie as it was Vonnegut’s first novel to become a best seller.
Comparing Slaughterhouse-Five And Things They Carried
599 Words | 3 PagesVonnegut’s novel is more of a science-fiction novel and references time traveling and aliens. The jumping around of events throughout the book makes it hard to concentrate on the timeline of the book. At one point Vonnegut writes how Billy Pilgrim is “simultaneously on foot in Germany in 1944 and riding his Cadillac in 1967.” (Vonnegut 58) This passage from the novel illustrates how the storyline of Slaughterhouse-Five becomes convoluted due to Vonnegut’s sporadic use of fantasy.
New Historicism In Slaughterhouse-Five
1106 Words | 5 PagesTo understand the history of past cultures, it is imperative that both sides are heard. Many novels continually showcase this new outlook on history. Kurt Vonnegut’s novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, demonstrates the New Historicism perspective with subjective accounts, reflections of the time it is written, and lack of the opposing side ’s outlook. To begin, New Historicism is showcased by subjective accounts that are apparent in developing the
The Dresden Bombing In Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five
1745 Words | 7 PagesKurt Vonnegut enlisted in the United States Army at the time of World War II. He was captured as a prisoner of war where he received much of his literary inspiration for Slaughterhouse-Five. The anti war theme throughout the book is touched on and also rebutted when Vonnegut states, “there would always be wars, that they were as easy to stop as glaciers” (Vonnegut 4). Vonnegut knows he is writing an anti war book but also is aware that wars cannot altogether be halted he is only trying to relay the horrors of war. The number of innocent victims killed by the bombing is alarming and Vonnegut keeping with his anti war theme made it a point to center his novel around the Dresden bombing which increased knowledge of what the historical city Dresden once was.
Essay Comparing Time's Arrow And Slaughterhouse-Five
1729 Words | 7 PagesTime’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.
Social Criticism In Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five
1077 Words | 5 PagesTrout 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.
Slaughterhouse Five Postmodern Analysis
1189 Words | 5 PagesHow 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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