On The Carnival Characteristics Of Slaughterhouse-Five

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.(1922-2007) is one of the most important postmodernist novelistsin contemporary literary history of America. Slaughterhouse-Five is his masterpiecewhich let him enjoy good fame home and abroad and also one of the representativeworks of black humor.As one of the "Novels of Black Humor", Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Fivehas attracted a lot of attention. It has received a variety of criticism. Meantime, criticshave interpreted novel from different perspectives. For instance, they comment on itsblack humor style, its characters, its themes and its nonlinear narration methods.However, few critics have attempted to analyze the carnival feature permeated in thetext. The thesis is aimed to interpret the carnival features in the text by applyingBakhtin’s theory of Carnivalization in order to open a new angle on its assessment.The thesis analyzes the novel from the three perspectives of the carnivalistic plot,carnivalistics spirit and carnivalistic language and structure. The introduction partmakes a brief introduction to Vonnegut’s life, his works and the content ofSlaughterhouse-Five, and it also summarizes the literary review home and abroad inrecent years, briefly explains the research purpose and significance of writing the thesis.Chapter One is theoretical basis part. It introduces the basic concepts of Bakhtin’stheory of Carnivalization and points out the connection between Bakhtin’s theory andKurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five in order to show the similarities between thetheory of carnivalization and Slaughterhouse-Five. Chapter Two mainly analyses thecarnivalistic plot, which includes carnival characterization, carnival rituals and carnivalsquare. These typical images are the results of the transformation from the rituals in thecarnival festivals, which embody the strong carnival sense of the world. The novelimplies a structure of decrowning and crowning as well as shows plots on carnivalsquare, which reveals the spirit of change and shift, and certifies that the novel has thecarnivalistic plot. Chapter Three focuses on the spirit of subversion and dialogue ofSlaughterhouse-Five. In the novel, Vonnegut subverts religion, American Dream and Capitalism and the closeness nature of people’s relationship. Meantime, heteroglossiamade up of genres collage and polyphony feature exploded in the novel shows acarnivalistic dialogue spirit. Chapter Four interprets the carnival languages and structureof this novel. The carnivalistic language style can be seen from Bakhtin’s purposely usevulgar language, the insertion of other languages and creation of some new words aswell as repetition of seemingly meaningless words. The carnivalistic structure is showedthrough chronotope structure in the novel, which is a special carnivalistic concept ofspace and time. The conclusion makes a brief summary of the whole thesis andindicates that Slaughterhouse-Five is a novel with special carnivalistic features.