The Narrative Technique In Slaughterhouse-Five

Kurt Vonnegut is one of the favorite dark humorists of the past century. Saughterhouse-Five is his masterpiece, which employs the concept of imaginary Tralfamadorians to present the destruction of Dresden in the Second World War and to reflect the social reality in the 1960s.Slaughterhouse-Five is neither based on the principle of chronology nor on the principle of coherence. This thesis concentrates its analysis of the novel on the devices Vonnegut employs in his narrative technique.At first it is important to look at the narrator, or rather at the two narrators of the story. As the narrator has got a great influence on the reader and on the way in which the reader perceives and evaluates his story, it must be shown how the traditional conception of the narrator is turned upside down and why this is the case. It is also important to convey what effect this conception of the narrator has on the reader of slaughterhouse-Five v/ho expects a conventional anti-war book.Having analyzed the narrator, it is now important to identify and evaluate the technique of repetitions. The repetitions are prevalent throughout the whole novel and function as a connecting link between the different thematic levels of the plot.Finally, this thesis analyzes the striking feature of Slaughterhouse-Five-nonlmear narrative. The novel is disjointed, with dozens of chronological leaps in every chapter. There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no causes and no effects. Vonnegut could not use the traditional form of the novel to present life, because the conventional novel conforms to assumptions of cause and effect and rigidities of time and substance that he questions. Vonnegut prefers not to make a narrative of the Dresden massacre. Narratives are often used to make sense of events, but there is no way to make sense of a massacre.