On The Metafictionality Of Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s Slaughterhouse-Five

Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s most prominent work thatestablishes his status in contemporary American literature, has been studied by agreat number of critics since1969when it was published. However, very few studieshave been done from the perspective of metafictional theories, let alone an elaborateanalysis of its metafictional narrative techniques and themes. So this thesis attemptsto decode Slaughterhouse-Five’s unique charm from the perspective of metafiction.Based on theories of metafiction, this thesis discusses such metafictionalnarrative techniques as authorial intrusion, intertextuality and parody, andindeterminacy in Slaughterhouse-Five and analyzes the important roles which thesetechniques play in constructing the thematic meanings of Slaughterhouse-Five as ametafiction: the author’s intrusion into the novel exposes the fictionality of the novel;the application of intertextual and parodic techniques blurs the boundary betweenreality and fictionality and urge people to reconsider the relationship between realityand fiction; the indeterminacy of the novel reflects the new relationship betweenreaders and writers in postmodern literature. A conclusion can be drawn thatSlaughterhouse-Five is a work typical of metafictional characteristics. The processof writing this novel is Vonnegut’s attempt to explore the metafictional theory inform of practicing it. Vonnegut’s as well as other metafictionists’ explorations oftheories and practices of metafiction set up a good pattern for fictions under thecircumstance of the “exhaustion of literature”, opening up the space of widerfictional development.