Postmodernism By Kurt Vonnegut

Billy Pilgrim is the person that the book is written around. We follow him, perhaps not in a straight order, from his youth joining the military to his abduction on the alien planet of Tralmalfadore, to his older age at his 1960s home in Illum. It is his experiences and journeys that we follow, and his actions we read about. However, Billy had a specific lack of character for a main one. He is not heroic, he has very little personality traits, let alone an immersive and complex character. Most of the story is written around his experiences that seem more like symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder from his World War Two days, combined with hallucinations after a brain injury in a near-fatal plane

Lying is never easy, especially when the lie is to parents. Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s story “The Lie” is about a boy named Eli Remenzel, who is on his way to Whitehill Academy, a school his parents want him to go to. But there is one catch, Eli knows he didn’t pass his entrance exam, so he has to go on a car ride with his parents to Whitehill with the thought looming over him. One lesson the story suggests is that people lie or hide things when they encounter a bad situation and tend to show it as well.

In the book Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut Jr, Billy Pilgrim is the main character, the protagonist of the novel. The novel is focused on the four sides of Billy. The first being his life as a WWII soldier. The second, his present, which is a very boring life as a husband, father, and optometrist in Ilium, New York. The third is his time travels from past to future, and the fourth is his life as a prisoner on the planet Trafalmadore.

For a novel to be considered a Great American Novel, it must contain a theme that is uniquely American, a hero that is the essence of a great American, or relevance to the American people. Others argue, however, that the Great American Novel may never exist. They say that America and her image are constantly changing and therefore, there will never be a novel that can represent the country in its entirety. In his novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut writes about war and its destructiveness. Vonnegut tells the story of Billy Pilgrim, an unlikely hero, mentally scarred by World War Two. Kurt Vonnegut explains how war is so devastating it can ruin a person forever. These are topics that are reoccurring in American history and have

Throughout Vonnegut’s novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, he bestows an ancient question: Are humankind experts of their own future, or are they merely pawns of fate? This novel is used to explore the reality of free will and the theory of predestination. Vonnegut uses the acts and ideals of the characters in his novel to elaborate both ideas. Billy Pilgrim is most frequently the character used to express Vonnegut’s views. He is used as an example of a man living contradictory of Vonnegut’s beliefs. Through literary techniques, Vonnegut analyzes the deprivation of free will, presented by the Tralfamadorian’s, and during the course of the novel refutes it. Slaughterhouse-Five is essentially Vonnegut’s desire for humanity to meet this commitment. It

Irrational behavior is a huge part of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-five because Billy Pilgrim’s character and the plot line are shaped by it throughout the book. The spastic ordering of his life story and the thorough belief that he was abducted by Tralfamadorian aliens are what shape this book’s story and Billy’s way of life. Although unreasonable, his behavior can be considered justified because of the time he spent in World War II. Post-traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD, is common in veterans and, in Billy’s case, very serious. Billy is not at fault for the reaction his brain has to certain situations or that he suffers from flashbacks, sleep complications, and emotional numbness. PTSD is responsible for and justify Billy’s delusions and aberrant behavior.

Written by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. His book took close to twenty-three years to finish, due to a internal strife. His book was still in writing during the times he went back to Europe to visit the old battlegrounds he had once fought in. Vonnegut served the during World War 2 and was a American P.O.W., to the town of Dresden, where he and other captured American prisoners were forced to do work. During the years he was captured he lived in an underground made facility. During his stay, Allied Forces fire bombed Dresden, close to 100,000 people were killed. The times he was trapped in Dresden, and the friendly fire attack and the obliteration of close to hundred-thousand people left emotion scars. The visits back to Europe,

New historicism and cultural studies is a version of a criticism. This type of criticism looks at the events in history around the time the author of the literature wrote it to help understand why the literature was written that way. The article, New Historicism, describes this version of criticism in terms of history, “history here is not a mere chronicle of facts and events, but rather a complex description of human reality and evolution of preconceived notions”(Delahoyde). By looking at the time period and events that happened to the author you can better understand why the author wrote the way they did.

“Slaughterhouse Five” by Kurt Vonnegut is historical and science fiction novel about a man named BIlly Pilgrim and his life, mostly focusing on the time he spent in Dresden during World War II. The book takes place all throughout the 1900’s. Slaughterhouse is written in both first and third person, it goes back and forth from New York and Germany. Billy Pilgrim the antagonist the protagonist is this story because he is fighting against himself. The major conflict in this book is Billy trying to get over his first hand experience in Dresden, with that said the mood is an emotional back story of his life.

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut is the story of a man named Billy Pilgrim who time travels through his own life, and becomes ‘unstuck’ in time after being abducted by aliens. In the story he eventually loses himself and his relationship with his daughter. Though the story takes place in a non chronological order, this book is considered semi-autobiographical because events in this book had actually taken place and affected Vonnegut himself. Social commentary in this book are based solely off of violence and self loss.

Initially, I did not know what it meant to be “unstuck in time” but, after reading and watching Slaughter House Five by Kurt Vonnegut, I got a better perception and understanding of what it means. In the book, Billy Pilgrim lives his whole life out of sequence and it had me wondering what if I lived my life in that way. The effects would be interesting and confusing because I would not be living in the present. For example, one day I would be in past and another day I would be in the future. The good aspects of living that way is that life can be more of an adventure going back and forth in time rather than being stuck and living in the present. For instance in Slaughterhouse Five, everything looked like a journey for Billy Pilgrim. One day

Kurt Vonnegut developed his view of America through a history of personal loss and trauma that was largely endured at the same time by his characters. As a child, Kurt Vonnegut lived in Indianapolis, Indiana, which he would use in many of his later novels. His father was a prominent architect, while his mother came from the family of a wealthy brewer. After the depression hit, his father lost his business and gave up, his mother became addicted to alcohol and prescription drugs. In his teen years, Vonnegut wrote for his high school newspaper and continued this interest when he went to Cornell. Vonnegut entered the army and was immediately captured by the Germans and sent as a POW to Dresden. While in Dresden, he was protected from the

The novel Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut is the fictional memoirs of Howard W. Campbell Jr., an American, labeled as a spy, who moved to Germany in 1923 at the age of 11, roughly five years after the First World War was over, and then later became a renowned playwright and Nazi propagandist. The action of the novel is narrated by Campbell himself. The plot is that he is recording his memoirs on a typewriter, while awaiting trial for war crimes in an Israeli prison. The story of Howards life, although fictional , is proof of the hardships that many people experienced during this historical time period, many of which can be related directly back to the author himself as he also served during the war. This novel can be considered a reflection of his own interpretations and experiences into a fictional text. From a New Historicist perspective there are many references to real world characters which played a key role in the development of the First and Second World War with the interpretation of the author’s opinion towards these characters a new historicist can analyze the work through its cultural context and understand the intellectual history through the story itself.

Postmodernist Features in Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle Cat's Cradle is a book, which enables many points for literary discussions. One possible topic of them could be the postmodernist features in this book. In this examination Ihab Hassan's essay "Toward a Concept of Postmodernism" was used as a source of secondary literature for defining of postmodernist features. The most visible and prevalent features are postmodernist metonymy, treatment of the character, dynamic tension, anarchy and a postmodernist look at religion as a whole. To put Vonnegut's Cradle into a definite time span, let me start with a bit of personal data about the author.

During the 19th and early 20th, Western world experienced numerous historical events and influential changes, including the Word Wars and technological revolutions. These phenomenons affected the society at large, including in the aspect of art and literature. Literary historians often classified literature from late 19th century until the end of World War II as modernism and literature after World War II as postmodernism. Although there are no explicit definitions, common traits can often be found that distinguished these two categories. In this paper, I will be examining modernism and postmodernism literature, as well as whether postmodernism still continue until now, focusing on Italo Calvino’s