A Chaotic World By Absurd Writing Techniques

Kurt Vonnegut is one of the representatives of the American postmodernist authors. His masterpiece Slaughterhouse-Five presents the absurd aspects of the modern American society by the postmodernist writing techniques. Postmodernism became mature in the United States after the Second World War with the emergence of the black humor as a marker of its formation. The research on Slaughterhouse-Five from home and abroad mainly focused on the black humor or one or several aspects of postmodern features instead of a comprehensive study. This thesis makes a detailed elaboration on Slaughterhouse-Five’s postmodern writing techniques by combining the social background with the author’s life experience,showing the era background of postmodern writing techniques and its impact on the time at that time.The first part of this thesis mainly introduces the personal experience of the author himself, the story, as well as the predecessors’ research and the purpose and significance of this thesis. The second part is the main body of this thesis including three chapters analyzing postmodern writing characteristics of Slaughterhouse-Five mainly from the following aspects:the introduction of the postmodernist writing techniques; detail analysis of the black humor style in Slaughterhouse-Five which not only inherits the style of black humor—war, death, and the anti-hero but also makes unprecedented innovation of writing skills—scientific elements; other postmodern characteristics in Slaughterhouse-Five. After World War Ⅱ, the emergence of the black humor marks the post-modernism reached its peak making it the main feature of postmodern writing model. Chapter-five is conclusion. This thesis also reflects many social problems at that time by the analysis of the postmodernist features in Slaughterhouse-Five. After the WWII, America’s economy and technology came to a high speed development time. It seemed that people’s living standard had improved a lot as a result of the great changes brought by modernized life. On the contrary, people were not happy at all due to the great pain brought by the war. Therefore, there were all kinds of social problems in America during1950s to1960s. The former literary form can not fully present the social realities. It was at that time that postmodernism came to the stage of literature. Postmodernism shows people an absurd world which can not be fully expressed only by words and logics. As a result, the chaotic world can only be presented by the absurd writing techniques.