In this essay I will be stylistically analysing an extract from Chapter 3 of Kurt Vonnegut’s novel; Slaughterhouse Five. I am particularly interested in the effects different perspectives have throughout my extract, as well as the effects of the narrative structure and if it conforms or diverges from the typical models of narrative structure. I am also going to be analysing the characterisation of different figures in my extract and the impressions these give on the characters. I will also be looking at how dialogue is represented and the overall effects of different devices. I am expecting to find that Vonnegut uses a mixture of different perspectives throughout which may be difficult to extract from each other. I also expect to find that Vonnegut generally complies with the usual narrative structure, however I would not be surprised to find some divergence.
Firstly I will discuss the representation of dialogue in my extract. The only two people to engage in any conversation are Wild Bob and Billy. When the arguably mentally as well as physically unstable Wild Bob first speaks, he speaks directly to Billy. ‘You one of my boys?’ (Vonnegut 1969: 55). However, rather than replying; Billy stays silent. ‘Billy didn’t reply.’ (Vonnegut 1969: 55). This could be viewed as Billy flouting Grice’s maxim of quantity as he is not providing the right amount of information Wild Bob is looking for; he is withholding participation in the conversation. This unwillingness to participate suggests that Billy may not know the answer or is not confident enough to answer the posed question. This is reiterated when we are told ‘The question made no sense’ (Vonnegut 1969: 55) This withholding of participation results in a pause causing Wild Bob to reph...
... middle of paper ...
...aracter wishes to distance themselves from the situation. The use of first person however, contradicts this idea and shows that the character is definitely cemented in the story. Farrell (2009: 352) explains that this method of inserting biography into perhaps prevents readers from easily dismissing the events Vonnegut describes. The first person narrative therefore reminds the reader that the events were in fact reality and suggests the fiction has an intimate connection with the narrators own life.
Works Cited
Farrell, S. (2009) ‘Critical Companion to Kurt Vonnegut’, Critical Companions Series, New York, Infobase Publishing
Tooan, J.M. (2001) ‘Narrative: A Critical Linguistic Introduction’, illustrated, reprint, revised, The Interface Series, London, England, Psychology Press
Vonnegut, K. (1969) Slaughterhouse-Five, Vintage Edition, London, England: Vintage
Slaughterhouse-Five is a story of Billy Pilgrim 's capture by the Nazi Germans during the last years of World War II. Throughout the narrative, excerpts of Billy’s life are portrayed from his pre-war self to his post-war insanity. Billy is able to move both forward and backwards through his life in a random cycle of events. Living the dull life of a 1950s optometrist in Ilium, New York, he is the lover of a provocative woman on the planet Tralfamadore, and simultaneously an American prisoner of war in Nazi Germany. While I agree with Christopher Lehmann-Haupt that Slaughterhouse-Five effectively combines fact and fiction, I argue that the book is more centralized around coping.
“Force is all-conquering, but its victories are short-lived.” Stated Abraham Lincoln. That quotes applies to Slaughterhouse-Five because even when you think you have conquered something and achieve the victory doesn’t mean that it will last long. Billy Pilgrim is the protagonist of Kurt Vonnegut Jr. anti-war novel, Slaughterhouse-Five. Billy Pilgrim is non-heroic in the anti-war novel which makes the theme of the book Slaughterhouse-Five a man who is “unstuck” in time.
In Slaughterhouse Five written by Kurt Vonnegut, war and life are two very important aspects. The war that is taking place during this time period in Slaughterhouse Five is World War II. Being in the war can affect many different people in different ways for the good, or for the bad. The war has an affect on two men named Billy Pilgrim, and Eliot Rosewater.
Kurt Vonnegut is the author of Slaughterhouse Five and he was a soldier during World War II. Slaughterhouse Five is a fictional story of what a man named Billy Pilgrim went through as a prisoner of war in Germany during World War II. Vonnegut experienced the bombing of Dresden in Germany when was a prisoner of war. Vonnegut's prison in Dresden, Germany was a slaughterhouse that the Germans forced the prisoners of war to live in. He relates some of his experiences during World War II to help him create the fictional story about Billy Pilgrim. Billy Pilgrim is a fictional character that Vonnegut created in order to somehow tell his store of Dresden. Most of Billy Pilgrim's experiences are similar to what Vonnegut actually experienced as a prisoner of war during World War II. PTSD is a disorder that disrupts someone's life keeping them from having an normal life because of a traumatic event that they experienced. PTSD is very common among soldiers returning from war because they went through many traumatic events during their deployment. It is very obvious to see that Vonnegut and Billy Pilgrim are suffering from PTSD after their deployment in Germany during World War II.
Most novels are not able to adequately present two distinct themes that oppose each other; Slaughterhouse-Five is not most novels. It is unique in almost every way, especially with respect to its themes. In Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut develops, to the surprise of the reader, the themes of both the necessity of the concept of free will and its illusion. While these themes seem to contradict each other, they are also complimentary. Kurt Vonnegut’s unique writing style enables the reader to perceive both of these themes in the text.
The tone of the first chapter of Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut is a mixture of candid and matter of fact, with an underlying tone of indifference and detachment. This tone is displayed throughout the chapter with Vonnegut’s use of informal language and phrases, such as the first sentence “All this happened, more or less.” He conveys this tone not only through phrases such as “and so on” or “so it goes”, but with stylistic elements with his use of punctuation, spaces, repetition, and ellipses. He uses this tone in the first chapter to set the audience up for how the rest of the novel will be written, and to display to the audience his style of writing and how it may not always be reliable.
In Slaughterhouse- five, Kurt Vonnegut successfully combines historical and biographical pieces to create the novel. But did he take his content too far? Vonnegut purposely gives accurate accounts of his lifetime to make his novel realistic. The realism depicted in the story includes real life descriptions of sex and gore filled images. Vonnegut also makes a habit of having dialogue with profanity. Many schools have tried to ban Slaughterhouse- Five because of the absurd amount of profanity, sexual scenes, and unpatriotic theme. For example, Missouri state university successfully banned Slaughterhouse- five from their school because a professor believed that the foul language was inappropriate for a school setting. School teachers, students,
In Slaughterhouse- Five, Kurt Vonnegut’s themes of war and time travel to tell the story of World War II in Dresden through the eyes of Billy Pilgrim. Vonnegut uses flashbacks and blackouts to bring Billy back and forth throughout different eras of his life in order for him to develop a way to cope with the bombing in Dresden.
Analysis of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five Section One- Introduction Slaughterhouse-Five, written by Kurt Vonnegut Junior, was published in 1968 after twenty-three years of internal anguish. The novel was a "progressive work" after Vonnegut returned from World War II. Why did it take twenty-three years for Kurt Vonnegut to write this novel?
Rackstraw, Loree. “The Vonnegut Cosmos.” The North American Review 267.4 (Dec. 1982): 63-67. JSTOR. Web. 25 Sept. 2011.
Meeter, Glenn. "Vonnegut's Formal and Moral Otherworldliness: Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse-Five," in Jerome Klinkowitz & John Somer (eds.), The Vonnegut Statement. USA: Delacourte Press/ Seymour Lawrence, 1973, 204-220.
What is war? Is war a place to kill? Or is it a place where something more than just killing happens? War, as defined by the Merriam Webster is “a state or period of usually open and declared fighting between states or nations.” War, can also be viewed with romantic ideals where heroes and legends are born. Even the most intelligent of us hold some rather naïve notions of war. Upon reading Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, intelligent readers have been divested of any romantic notions regarding war they may have harboured.
Baruch Spinoza once said “Experience teaches us no less clearly than reason, that men believe themselves free, simply because they are conscious of their actions and unconscious of the causes whereby those actions are determined.” He compared free-will with destiny and ended up that what we live and what we think are all results of our destiny; and the concept of the free-will as humanity know is just the awareness of the situation. Similarly, Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five explores this struggle between free-will and destiny, and illustrates the idea of time in order to demonstrate that there is no free-will in war; it is just destiny. Vonnegut conveys this through irony, symbolism and satire.
Reed, Peter J. and Marc Leeds eds. The Vonnegut Chronicles: Interviews and Essays. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996.
The novel, presented as a series of disjointed, possibly problematic, narrative frames, attempts to draw attention to this fact. "...no word exists alone, and the reason for choosing each word had to be explained with a stor...