and songs, among other things, to get their opinions out into the world. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut is considered one of these anti-war novels, “one of the greatest anti-war novels ever written” (The Folio Society, web) in fact, though it is not necessarily one of them. It tells the tale of war, without heroes; however, many individuals still consider it an anti-war novel because of this hero-less portrayal. Vonnegut uses music throughout his novel to portray Billy Pilgrim’s emotions regarding
demonstrates how Kurt Vonnegut experiments with the narrative structure of his novel Slaughterhouse-Five. The study focuses on Vonnegut’s experimentation which assents to postmodern innovative virtuosity. On the outset of postmodernism, two critical issues have been raised. That is, the literature of exhaustion and the literature of replenishment dominating modern literature. Accordingly, this study explores Vonnegut’s critique of literary exhaustion prevailing modernism’s exhausted literary forms in order
Early on in Slaughterhouse Five, Billy Pilgrim tells his wife, Valencia, “‘It would sound like a dream’” (121) to tell her about his experiences in the war. Shortly thereafter, he becomes unstuck in time again, traveling back to his horrific life as a soldier in World War II. Making the connection between a novel with a theme of insanity to an Edgar Allan Poe poem seemed only natural. Poe, like Kurt Vonnegut, is a master of developing the topic in an ironic, dark manner, as seen in his short-story