War, Memory And Wound: Analysis Of War Trauma In Slaughterhouse-Five

Although Kurt Vonnegut survived the exorbitant Dresden fire-bombing from theAllied forces on February13th,1945as a war prisoner there, its impact would neverleave this future American novelist of black humor. Once repatriated home fromEuropean battlefield, he started to write about this bombing. However, his intention totransmute his hellish incident of Dresden into a piece of art had been constantlyfrustrated by his fear or incompetence of doing so until the publication of hissemi-autobiographic novel Slaughterhouse-Five. His experiences of Dresden accidenthave undoubtedly cast great shadow on this novel, as well as on his own life.Accordingly, trauma theory is employed here for a detailed analysis of the onset,development and manifestation of trauma on the part of the author Vonnegut and theprotagonist Billy Pilgrim and their respective way of dealing with trauma.The thesis consists of six chapters. The first chapter is the introduction to KurtVonnegut and Slaughterhouse-Five, literature review, the structure and significance ofthe thesis. The next chapter expounds trauma theory, including its main content,historical development and application in humanities and literary analysis, whichconstitutes the theoretical basis of the thesis. The third chapter carefully studies thecauses for the onset of Billy’s and Vonnegut’s trauma both from the individual andsocial perspective. The causes for Billy’s trauma mainly include his grim childhood, thegruesome war experiences and the brutal and pointless post-war life; as for Vonnegut,the major causes responsible for his mental anguish lie in his experiencing andwitnessing of the Dresden air raid and the collective denial and amnesia of the truthabout it. The fourth chapter concentrates on their traumatic symptoms on the basis ofthe novel as well as other relevant resources. Suffering from war trauma, Billy hasdisplayed the depressive illness and the typical symptoms of post-traumatic stressdisorder, namely, the intrusive memory and avoidance; neither is Vonnegut immunefrom the corrosive aftermath of wartime nightmare: he has encountered the problems ofpsychogenic amnesia, alcoholic misuse and repetitive compulsion, which is bound tobring about much inconvenience to the writing process of Slaughterhouse-Five. Thefifth chapter analyzes Billy’s regression into Tralfamadorian fantasy for evading theoverpowering trauma and his final spiritual oubliette in fatalism; it also illustratesVonnegut’s effective therapeutic writing process and his courageous testimony to the truth of Dresden fire-bombing. The last chapter is the conclusion of the thesis. It sumsup the preceding analysis about Billy’s and Vonnegut’s causes of trauma, symptoms andtheir different ways of processing threat-related information and ultimately reaches theconclusion about the devastating effect of war cruelties exerted on human psyche andsubsequently the absurd and meaningless nature of war cruelties and barbarities.The analysis of this thesis penetrates and exposes how war and violence robs anddamages humanity and brings tragedy, which urges readers to make retrospect of thevery nature and validity of war.