Bringing Chaos To Order

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. is considered as a major voice among the important postmodernist novelists in American contemporary literature. Though a well-known and widely read writer, Vonnegut has never inspired unequivocal applause literary critics accord to John Barth or Thomas Pynchon. He is always labeled as a black humorist and most literary studies tend to attach great importance to his famous novel Slaughterhouse-Five, and his other novels still wait for more comprehensive and systematic assessment. This thesis will make a technical analysis of Vonnegut's two novels Slaughterhouse-Five and Breakfast of Champions from the perspective of metafiction. It argues that in the period of the coming "death of the novel" as some literary theorists prophesy, as a self-conscious writer, Vonnegut has always been trying to explore the possibilities of novel writing by bringing postmodernist "chaos" to traditional novel writing "order".The author of this thesis firstly introduces Kurt Vonnegut and his works. A review of major criticism on Kurt Vonnegut and his two novels is provided to show the necessity to write the thesis. Then, on the basis of these preparations is put forward the central argument.In the .first chapter, some theories concerning Kurt Vonnegut's works are introduced by the author including postmodernism, postmodernist fiction, and metafiction.In the second chapter, the author analyzes three metafictional techniques shared in both novels including allusion, third-person/first-person intrusion narratives and mise en abyme. Gerard Genette's discussion of intertextuality, Linda Hutcheon and Brian McHale's discussions of mise en abyme and Patricia Waugh's theory on third-person/first-person intrusion narratives are applied to the analysis of this chapter.In the third chapter, two metafictional techniques used exclusively in Slaughterhouse-Five are discussed including montage and parody. Patricia Waugh's theory on parody and Linda Hutcheon's theories on historiographic metafiction and parody are applied to the analysis of this chapter. Both metafictional techniques are discussed to justify Slaughterhouse-Five as a metafiction and a historiographic metafiction.In the fourth chapter, the author finds and interprets two metafictional techniques employed exclusively in Breakfast of Champions including metafictional collage and open ending. Patricia Waugh's theories on metafictional collage and frames are applied to the analysis of this chapter. The author wants to prove that it is a metafiction which plays language games arbitrarily.Finally, the author comes to the conclusion that Vonnegut is one the earliest postmodernist metafictional writers who use metafiction to demonstrate their artistic opinions and the two novels are the best examples of Vonnegut's postmodernist metafictional writing. The author also concludes that Vonnegut deconstructs the traditional novel writing modes by employing metafictional techniques.