Fact Or Fantasy

Slaughterhouse-Five is a masterpiece of Kurt Vonnegut, a famous American postmodern novelist. Since its publication, it has received a high popularity among readers and critics. This thesis makes a research into the novel's narrative feature from the following aspects: the duality in its narrative causality, the multiplicity in its narrative voice, the fragmentation and anachrony in its narrative time and the frequent change in its narrative space.On the surface of the narration in Slaughterhouse-Five, there seems to be no causality, especially in the narration of Billy's time travel. However, in his war-time experience, clear temporal and causal relation runs through the story all along. Emma Kafalenos'Model of"Narrative Sequence"is applied to explain and prove its narrative causality in the narration of novelist's writing process and its narration concerning war. And the seemingly non-causality in Billy's time travel is discussed in the thesis as a sarcastic parody of the absurdity and the unreasonableness of the war. The multiplicity in its narrative voice is another characteristic with regard to its narrative art. The heterodiegetic narrator is used to describe the war scenes. Sometimes the narrator is heterodiegetic, the focalizer, however, is the character in the story rather than the narrator. Another narrator is the intrusive narrator, who explains the writing problems encountered by the novelist and his writing purpose. From this, the novelist's experimentation on writing can be seen. The fragmentation and anachrony in its narrative time are very prominent characteristics of its narrative art. Another feature of narrative time is embodied in its narrative frequency. The"repeating narrative"is one form of Genette's four types of narrative frequency. The important events in the novel are repeated and recurred to prove their long lasting influence on Billy's mentality. Anachrony is another feature of its narrative time. Retroversion and anticipation are used to show the disorder in the character's mind, which is a symptom of Schizophrenia caused by the war. The frequent change in its narrative space is another prominent feature with regard to its narrative art. The three kinds of narrative space are the war-time prison in Dresden, the after-war home in America, and the Utopian Planet Tralfamadore. The narration is interchanged among the three places with Billy's time travel. Every time Billy is tormented by the cruel yet unchangeable reality, he will be thrown into another space, where he can only get temporal peace and comfort. Billy is constantly thrown from one miserable state to another in this way, unable to tell the difference between fact and fantasy. This shows the immense and uncontrolled influence of environment on the petty characters.From the dual narrative causality, the multiple narrative voices, the fragmentized time and the frequent changing narrative space, it can be seen the novel subverts the narrative model of traditional anti-war novel. These distinctive features pave the way for exposing the theme of the novel which implicates the incurable trauma caused by WWII to the Americans and the novelist's attempt to cure the trauma through writing.