"slaughterhouse Five" Defamiliarization

Slaughterhouse-Five is the masterpiece of the twentieth century American writer, Kurt Vonnegut. With the event of firebombing in Dresden as the historical background, the novel relates the experiences of the hero, Billy Pilgrim. The writer expresses his attitude toward time, war, death and American society through this novel. Slaughterhouse Five is different from traditional anti-war novels in that Vonnegut reflects the absurdity of war and the irrationality of the world with his unique writing techniques.The thesis aims at analyzing the language, narrative techniques and the main characters of the novel by applying the theory of"defamiliarization"of the Russian Formalism, and showing how Vonnegut made Slaughterhouse Five different from other anti-war novels.