The Alternative Worlds In Timequake

Since the1960s, post modern fiction has started a revolution in the history ofliterature. This new type of fiction is distinct particularly because of the adoption ofalternative worlds, which has many kinds of forms and is one of the key features of postmodernism. This thesis focuses on alternative worlds in Timequake by Kurt Vonnegut,discussing mainly three types of alternative worlds: the author s world, the alien worldsand the real world reflected.With the intrusion of the author, the author s world offers readers a mirror to lookdeep into the inner side of the author, the novel and the way of writing. The alien worlds,which seem to have torn the whole story into broken pieces, actually echo with the themeof the novel and contribute to completing the story. All different alternative worlds aim atreflecting the real world. Though, unlike realistic and modern writers who believe theyrepresent reality in their works, post modern writers doubt whether language could showreaders reality. Still they try to reflect the real world, a more subjective one. In postmodernism novels, writers focus on discovering different possibilities and layers of realityby playing with language and with readers. Alternative worlds, as a device, enable writersto broke traditional reading habit of readers as well as the traditional structure of novels,with the purpose of taking readers away from “reality” and bringing them to the world ofpossibilities. In post modernism novels, every world and character seem illogical andbroken, but they are logical and united deeply inside.By discovering relations among alternative worlds and summarizing their features,this thesis tries to reveal the functions of alternative worlds in post modernism fiction.Unlike traditional criticisms which discuss more about the intrusion of the author and sortdifferent layers in post modern fiction into the category of structure of the whole novel, inthis thesis,“Alternative worlds” stand out and become an independent and indispensabledevice in post modern fiction, and are analyzed as a most important means used by postmodern writers to realize their purpose of displaying the real post modern world and theinner world of everyone.