On The Art Of Fragments In Postmodern Novels

The art of fragments is the inevitable result of postmodernism. Postmodern writers like to use fragments in their works. Great postmodern writers such as Donald Barthelme, Kurt Vonnegut, and Thomas Pynchon particularly trust fragments in their writings. With the art of fragmentation,these writers aim at reflecting a decentralized and absurd society in which people live and get isolated and schizophrenic because of their disconnected and discontinued existence.This thesis tries to examine the art of fragments that is characteristic in postmodern novels. Fragments did not come from nowhere. This thesis argues that the art of fragments has its origin in the postmodernism and the literature evolution. As a continuation of and a reaction to modernism, postmodernism boasts the spirit of questioning the authority, subverting the conventions and transforming the old-fashioned way of thinking. Postmodern society features in drastic changes, disorder and chaos, where people are becoming marginalized and decentered. All these features manifest themselves through fragments in postmodern novels. The art of fragments is used to embody the spirit of postmodernism. Then this thesis ellaborates on the philosophy of western literature creation from wholeness to fragments during the process of literature development. In postmodern literature, the art of fragments helps the novelists to present unconventional form, fractural structure, unrelated narration, dislocated plots, text collage, and schizophrenic characters. After the examination of postmodernism and the literature development, this thesis conducts a case study of three representative postmodern novels: Snow White, Slaughterhouse-Five, and Gravity's Rainbow with the focus on Tralfamadorian clumps, chronology disruption, convoluted plots and disintegrated characters, which are the multiple novelistic manifestations of fragments.The thesis attempts to illustrate that the fragments that are characteristic of postmodern novels are the inevitable result of the postmodernism. Fragments in postmodern literature reflect the chaos and disorder of postmodern society and fragmentariness of human beings. Postmodern writers use fragments in an effort to break the wholeness and unity predetermined in traditional aesthetics, deconstruct modern culture into pluralistic and centerless state and decentralize the traditional status of logo-centrism and other forms of artificially imposed order.