Discuss the Narrative Method of Kurt

Discuss the Narrative earthner of Kurt Vonneguts mass murder Five Kurt Vonneguts Slaughterhouse Five is a that in no way derriere be treated as one-dimensional one. It deals with the historical events like the bombing of Dresden, socio-cultural humans of America in the 1960s and the alternating(a) bringing of Tralfamadorians. Although three different realms argon combined, the new(a) does not pass on anything that could be perceived as unseen. Its exceptionality comes from a less explored perspective the reinvigorateds incomparable archives structure.It appears taken for granted(predicate) that the text could not extradite been interpreted with the use of tralatitious interpretational tools therefore Vonnegut introduced a new method of narration. The main revolve about of the analysis are several devices Vonnegut uses to create his narration. offset of wholly the write up has in item two narrators not one. In this way the reader sees more clearly that he narra tion proficiency is in a way turned upside down. The narrator not necessarily loses his traditional role and still influences the way readers perceive the p mass of land but a slight difference chamberpot be discoverd.What is more, setback to the potential assumptions of the reader, Slaughterhouse-Five not entirely breaks out with the convention of an anti-war book. The second reduce that needs to be looked upon are the stylistic devices use by the author. Those are the collage technique, the foreshadowing of nigh of the events and multitude of repetitions. These tools sack be traced in every chapter of the unexampled. Moreover both of them connect different levels in the plot. The tierce aspect of the raw is Vonneguts attempt to explore the subconscious of the friend with the use of Tralfamadorian existence.It king be argued whether the authors intention was to suck up the reader believe in alternative world or to represent the main character as insane. By the matt er of accompaniment such(prenominal) question is legitimate as the topic of schizophrenia can be easily associated with truncheon Pilgrims travels in prison term and space. From the first reprobate in the novel the reader becomes aware that it is impossible to suppose whether the twaddle is true or fictitious. All this happened, more or less. (p. 5) Throughout those linguistic process the reader is confronted with is the question of truth.In this way Vonnegut gives the reader a thrill and achieves the resultant of reality. On the one hand the reader feels that the story is a lying on the other however well-nigh parts of the story seem to be far too realistic to be artificial. Moreover Vonnegut calls his novel a failure. (p. 14) With this expression he over again brings it into question the truthfulness of the describe particulars. The question whether the novel tells a real story or is solely a successful mystification is left to the reader to answer by himself. The st ory begins in chapter II.The author introduces the relay station micturated baton Pilgrim who describes his time travels. As the story unfolds the reader gets more details about the alternative world of the Tralfamadorians. The idea of time traveling as well as the Utopian invigoration on another planet is, by the matter of fact, exclusively a renewed and transferred to the modern versions of topics introduced to literature centuries earlier by doubting Thomas More or Jonathan Swift. There is however one aspect, which is worth a particular amount of attention the way the story is presented.Taking into consideration the fact that it is Billy who describes what happened it is odd that every expression, Billy utters, is commented on with the words he enunciates. (p. 20) At first sight this may not seem classical but it points to the question of truth. Does Billy travel to remote areas, or does he only say so? Vonnegut asks this question every time he repeats those words. anothe r(prenominal) device used by the narrator is the foreshadowing of essential events. As an example one may look at the adjacent expression Billy sat down in the waiting room. He wasnt a widower yet. (p. 4) By foreshadowing several(prenominal) of the important events in the story the author breaks with the pattern of time. He deliberately upsets the chronology in the novel. It is palpable especially when Vonnegut places the first and the last sentences of the novel next to each other. That social occasion forces the reader more focused term reading the novel, more too-careful in search of full understanding. What is more not only the concept of chronology but also tension is rejected in the novel. Vonnegut avoids tension by anticipating somewhat of the events which are connected with a given character, for example His name was Howard W.Campbell, Jr. He would later hang himself while awaiting trial as a war criminal. (p. 63) Next technique used by Vonnegut repetition of some phrases. The repetitions appear throughout the novel in different contexts. I drive my wife away with a breath like indian mustard gas and roses. (p. 6) This quotation occurs in the first chapter which describes the genesis of his novel. It is used again in chapter four, when Billy imagines that he can smell somebodys breath and once again in the war episode when the relay station describes the bodies rotted and liquefied and the smell was like roses and mustard gas. (p. 105) The smell is a kind of a sign which links the past with the present. The repetitions also heart and soul several episodes of the novel in order to call for it less chaotic and incoherent and introduce a kind of structure. That in turn makes the novel more coherent and easier to follow. Apart from stylistic devices which Vonnegut, with all his mastery, uses to create the unique atmosphere Slaughterhouse Five turns out to be also a in-depth study of human psyche. The psychological aspect of the book is, ho wever, deftly wrapped with the use of alien guild of the Tralfamadorians.The symbolic meaning of this alternative reality is in fact more than a symbol, as it becomes true to some extent at some of the points of the novel. What is more Billys stick about also make the reader raises more questions than it would be possible to append answers to. Who or what are Tralfamadorians? Are they a symbol of an ideal society that is a far cry from the one known and used on Earth? A morality which just like many which preceded it should point us the way?Or maybe the planet exists only in Billys imagination and is nothing more than a plaint of a reason tormented by regret, a world existing in Billys reality only? It is difficult to state whether Vonnegut privations to impose the expression that Billy is schizophrenic or whether he tries to convince the reader that the Tralfamadorians really exist. It is essential to notice that Vonnegut does use the word schizophrenia from the very beginni ng of the novel. This is a novel somewhat in the telegraphic schizophrenic manner of tales of the planet Tralfamadore, where the degraded saucers come from. (p. ) Ambiguous as it is this statement still points out to the fact that the authors intention was to mislead the reader a make him believe that schizophrenia might be the key issue, an element that should not be omitted. What is schizophrenia? According to R. D. Laing schizophrenia can be expound as a special strategy that a person invents in order to live an unlivable situation. This definition contrary to the strictly medical, that is traditional view seems to focus less on the fact that schizophrenia is a serious mental illness and more on the opportunities a disassemble personality provides.According to this definition the fact that ones personality can be torn apart because of the negative environment is a understandable defensive reaction. Might it be then a coincidence that the Tralfamadorians themselves might be treated as schizophrenic as they all the time neglect any negative implications in flavor and exclusively focus on the positive moments. Taking into consideration all the troubles Billy experiences during his lifetime, it seems obvious that Slaughterhouse Five tells a story of a man who can perceive his life as a failure.The protagonist has a negative childhood, marries a woman whom he pities but not love, so he is relieved when he loses her. He experiences much during the war, almost dies in a plane-crash and his children are hard to raise and difficult to love. For those reasons Billys life might be described as unlivable. do-nothing one gravel a transgress reason to break the identity in fractional and try to find shelter in the depths of ones head teacher? It seems to be a logical consequence for the protagonist. Mental illness perceived as a kind of barrier is also referred to several multiplication in the novel.As an example Rosewater, one of the characters in the novel utters an assumption that life is too heavy a burden to be bearable for some eg. Another time Billy heard Rosewater say to the psychiatrist, I hazard you guys are going to have to come up with a lot of wonderful new lies, or people just arent going to want to go on living. (p. 50) Also one of the descriptions given refers to one of the lineament feature of schizophrenia hallucinations by stating Billy Pilgrim was having a delightful hallucination. He was wearing dry, warm, white sweatsocks, and he was skating on a dance palace floor.Thousands cheered. This wasnt time-travel. It had never happened, never would happen. It was the craziness of a dying young man with his shoes full of snow. (p. 26) Again the author uses those expressions not without a reason. With a few sentences he reveals the delicate inside of his character, makes him more approachable as if he felt obliged to provide an explanation to his visions of a better life on another planet. Vonnegut makes even a step notwithstanding by deriving Billys illness from the physical consequences of the plane-crash.Apart from the fact that Billy was the only person which managed to survive still he suffered from good brain damages. This might have created the perfect mental environment for creating Tralfamadorians. Another device the author uses in narrating is placing information about novels written by Billys favorite author Kilgore Trout. The plot of those novels also influenced Billys time travels as one of them, entitled The Big climb on (p. 105) tells the story of a couple which have being abducted by aliens and shown in a zoo.It is than possible that Billy might have taken this story as a real one and projected the idea on himself. Vonnegut confirms this belief in chapter nine writing So they were trying to reinvent themselves and their universe. Science fable was a big help. (p. 50) Nevertheless the mental state of the main character is in no way clear for some parts of the chapter are nar rated as if the protagonist experienced the travel Billy was unconscious for two days after that, and he dreamed of millions of things, some of them true. The true things were time-travel. (p. 7) It seems obvious that the author deliberately makes the reader confused. This assumption can be proved as the narrator makes a clear eminence between time-travel and plain fantasy. However one can also say that Vonnegut seems to supply internal evidence for a psychological explanation of Tralfamadore while at the same time denying that evidence with a contradictory narrative statement. (Harris 235) It can only imply that reading Slaughterhouse-Five, one can comic that Vonneguts intention is far from being interested in true statement as far as the subdivision between reality and fiction is concerned.Only by such narration technique Vonnegut was able to allow the protagonist to solve the conflicts which thorn him apart, even if the only way to do it was to discover his identity by intr oducing schizophrenia. Slaughterhouse-Five is obviously one of the novels that could not be forgotten for it differs to a large extent from other works from this genre. The author, on purpose, neglects all values and norms. What is more no principles of logic can be apply to the plot. Therefore just like the novel is narrated in a exclusively new way, it needs also to be read differently in order to fully understand its unique utterance.BIBLIOGRAPHY (1)Kurt Vonnegut. Slaughterhouse-Five. Great Britain, Jonathan drapery Ltd 1970 available in PDF version on http//chomikuj. pl/Angouleme/e-booki/Kurt+Vonnegut+-+Slaughterhouse-Five,58449367. pdf (2)A quote by R. D. Laing found on http//www. quoteland. com/topic/Madness-Quotes/538/ (3)Charles B. Harris, Time, Uncertainty, and Kurt Vonnegut Jr. A Reading of Slaughterhouse Five, Farmington Hills Gale Group. October, 2001 Can be viewed at http//infotrac. galegroup. com/galenet? cause=http%3A%2F%2Fgalenet. galegroup. com%2Fservlet%2FDC%2F %3FfinalAuth%3Dtrue&cont=&sev=temp&type=session&sserv=no