Abstract
A POSTMODERNIST READING OF KURT VONNEGUT’S SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE
After World War II, postmodernism began to rise as a movement and so many novelists began using a non-linear style, which involved the use of techniques like: shift in time, stream of consciousness, interior monologues, juxtapositions, ... etc. The readers felt lost in the sense that they cannot grasp the meaning easily because the narrative is not sequential. Time shifts in the novel from the present to the past and to the future. However, it is only through a close reading that readers can differentiate between the frame story and the story within. Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2017) is one of those postmodernist American writers who used postmodernist elements clearly in this novel which reflect the fragmentation of modern western culture: fragmentation of time, space, language, and human subject. In his novel Slaughterhouse Five or The Children’s Crusade: A Duty-dance with Death (1969) he uses a humorous style to satirize authorities as well as society. The novels tackles the atrocities of war and the bombing of Dresden because Vonnegut was a true witness of that event. He was part of the cruel experience of World War II where he was captured and taken as a prisoner.
Vonnegut’s fiction reflects the literary, philosophical, and social tendencies of the late twentieth century. His anti-realistic novels represent a guide in the postmodern period in American literature. The most important thing in his novels is the old question of free will and the meaning of life, death, and love. The paper is concerned with
the postmodernist rendering of time and free will in Slaughterhouse Five.
Keywords
Postmodernism, juxtaposition, Slaughterhouse, Tralfamadore, a story within a story.
