Sci-fi and Postmodernist Elements in Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut- Definition of Sci-fi and...

Science FictionBy Nikki Akraminejad

INTRODUCTION TO SCIENCE FICTION GENRE

• It’s based on scientific principles and technology. (e.g.: technology in Brave New World)

• It may make predictions about life in the future. (e.g.: Dystopia predicted in 1984)

• It often deals with aliens or with life on other worlds.

(e.g.: Billy’s abduction by aliens in Slaughterhouse 5)

• It can comment on important issues in society.

(e.g.: consequences of war in Slaughterhouse 5)

• Science fiction includes novels and short stories that represent an imagined reality that is radically different in its nature and functioning from the world of our ordinary experience. The plot creates situations different from those of both the present day and the known past.

SETTING

• Often the setting is another planet, or this earth projected into the future, or an imagined parallel universe.

• These stories involve partially true-partially fictitious laws or theories of science. It should not be completely unbelievable, because it then ventures into the genre fantasy.

• Science fiction texts also include a human element, explaining what effect new discoveries, happenings and scientific developments will have on us in the future.

EXAMPLES

• Some well-known 20th century science fiction texts include 1984 by George Orwell, Brave New World by Alduous Huxley, and The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand.

Sci-fi in Slaughterhouse Five

• Billy and Eliot Rosewater read science fiction because their own realities no longer make sense to them.

• They need invented realities that work by different rules because their own lives have lost meaning.

• Slaughterhouse-Five’s main story deals with Billy Pilgrim’s memory of the war supported by such unrealistic elements as a kind of time warp, extraterrestrials and their four dimensional points of view

• These science fictional elements are actually the lies Billy relies on in order to reduce, in his recollection of the air raid on Dresden.

• Critics examine how Vonnegut structured the book: “he uses the science-fiction motif of time-travel to break up not only the subjective experience but also the objective measurement of time and thereby to spatialize his tale”

• Slaughterhouse-Five uses science fiction the same way it uses war, both as a plot point and as an object of philosophical examination.

• The level of self-consciousness that Slaughterhouse-Five brings to the genres of autobiography, war drama, and science fiction all point to a fourth and final genre: the postmodern novel.

• The constant confusion about when – or even whether – the different events of the novel happen mean that readers are constantly kept at some distance from Billy Pilgrim and his life story.

• By using the author as a character in the book and by telling Billy's story out of order, the novel itself keeps reminding us that Billy's story is fiction

• This manner of storytelling indicates a degree of skepticism about the idea of a unified self or the possibility of realistic narration that characterizes postmodernism.

How Is Slaughterhouse Five a Postmodernist Text?

• Kurt Vonnegut Jr. is a postmodernist writer who exhibits this with his adept uses of a non-linear narrative, metafictional technique, elliptical structure, and irony with touch of playfulness and dark humor.

• He created a pastiche of fiction, nonfiction, science fiction, and satire in the novel Slaughterhouse-five

• It talks about writing (metafiction).• Plays with the criteria of time, lack of a linear

narrative (fragmentation).• Explores reality and truth.• Plays with the notion of framebreaking:

Vonnegut; Narrative; and Vonnegut as the Protagonist (questionable narrator).

• Explores two different genres - History and Science-fiction.

• A Response to Modernist Literature.

Response to Modernism

Slaughterhouse-five is a response to the despair seen in modernism in that it uses a playful satirization of war to ultimately convey its senselessness and painful impacts

• The placement of Billy and an adult film star into a Tralfamadorian zoo provides some comic relief and starkly contrasts the wartime settings.

• The dark humor seen as a convention of postmodernism is used almost continually.

• The novel’s strategies of satire clearly address war but it’s also a postmodernist piece that attempts to satirize everything at once, which is almost the same thing as satirizing nothing in particular

Fragmentation

Kurt Vonnegut uses fragmentation of time, structure and character in order to unify his non-linear narrative. Vonnegut moves Billy rapidly, having him experience a mere fragment of his life before whisking him off again. This creates a collage effect in the novel, which is made up of bits and pieces of Billy's life.

FragmentationOne minute Billy is marching through a forest and the next he is waiting at a public pool for his father to teach him how to swim. This constant fragmentation of Billy's life serves, ironically, to unify Billy's character for the reader. By going back and forth in Billy's life the reader is able to see a whole picture of what Billy is actually like instead of just one fragment of his personality.

Narrator/Character

• In addition to being the narrator, Vonnegut is present within the text as the narrative's central character in the first and last chapters.

Paradox• Paradox is also used is

the story such as “a blowtorch that did not warm” or “scalding rain” [water coming from a showerhead is not literally rain].

THE END

Online Resources:

• M.H. Abrams A Glossary of Literary Terms• www.eduplace.com/activity/pdf/scifiction.pdf• http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/lesson_images/

lesson927/SciFiDefinition.pdf• www.gradesaver.com › Slaughterhouse Five › Study Guide• www.shmoop.com › Literature › Slaughterhouse-Five › Analysis• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodern_literature• http://www.unask.com/website/work99/bp3/laura/postmodern/

Index.html• https://suite.io/griffin-keedy• http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/metafiction• http://www.enotes.com/homework-help/provide-analyse-examples-key-

literary-language-316199• http://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/s/slaughterhousefive/critical-

essays/the-presence-of-the-narrator-in-slaughterhousefive• http://www.123helpme.com/view.asp?id=19269