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Kurt Vonnegut : The Concept Of Postmodernism

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French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard once said, “Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives.” Through his statement, he endeavored to associate a theory to the shifting concept of postmodernism; to synopsize different events, experiences, and phenomena in history through a universal appeal to truth. While his supposition, through equation with the poems of Kurt Vonnegut, Charles Olsen, or John Cage - does indeed seem to hold validity; to define postmodernism remains difficult. To define this era would be to violate the premise of the postmodernist that no absolute or definite terms, boundaries, or truths exist to do so. However, we can rest assured that all postmodernists do believe absolute…show more content…
Chiefly, of first-most importance, Kurt Vonnegut’s “Untitled,” primarily reflects the postmodern-characteristic theme of division in the 21st society through the examination of gender roles through humor and irony. Humour and irony are characteristic themes of the postmodern era due to how the treatment of non-humorous subjects (including World War Two or the Cold War) from a distanced stance of no connection is invoked. Through this position, they choose to depict their histories both ironically and humorously, highly reminiscent of the definition sparked by Lyotard. Gender roles are examined through humor and irony in Vonnegut’s poem when stated, “They wonder at a father/Who is sad and funny strong,/And they wonder at a mother/Like a childhood song” (lines 7-10). In this excerpt, we can clearly see humour in the “Two little good girls” (line 1) observed stereotype of the father, not only in the girls’initial propensity to“wonder” (lines 7, 9) (humorous in equating them to be great thinkers), but also through the usage of“funny strong” (line 8) to serve as a sort of oxymoron, ironic in the sense that both words directly contradict each other (as the word funny does not necessarily describe the word strongly). Vonnegut also uses humor
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