A New Historicist Reading Of Slaughterhouse Five

Kurt Vonnegut’s monumental but controversial work Slaughterhouse Five,largely based on his own war experiences, has certainly propelled him into the top of the literary world and even stirred up a surge of anti-war movements throughout the then United States. The importance of the work lies in the fact that Vonnegut in the book shows his practical concerns about all human beings and his artful innovations in terms of themes and writing styles of fictional writing, all of which are regarded as significant contributions to both New Historicism and other post-modern literary theories. Theories of New Historicism, and even the relevant Foucault’s theory of power, are clearly manifested in the novel’s reconstruction of history, meta-fiction,narrative modes and even political implications.For Slaughterhouse Five, most researchers have focused on themes such as anti-war, narrative modes, postmodernist features and the uncertainty of history,others have dwelled on the black humor embodied in the novel, such as the loss of reason, the absurdity of the world and the psychological conditions of the American public in the sixties and seventies. Also, Vonnegut’s peculiar ideas about space and time are also paid attention to by some scholars. This thesis, starting from New Historicist theories, aims to discuss the New Historicist features embodied in the novel with the help of relevant historical materials and post-modernist ideas. Study of this kind is line with both the background of Vonnegut’s literary creation and with his Second World War experiences. As a representative of black humor, Vonnegut displays with an individualized and un-conspicuous perspective the profound effects of the war upon individuals and society. Also, in Slaughterhouse Five, it is obvious that many postmodernist narrative modes always hold the same view as the relevant New Historicist theories. Like postmodernist methods, New Historicism can represent in the form of fiction the historical truth and inner feelings of people.In the first part of the thesis, a brief introduction to the author and his major works will be given, and then his writing styles will be discussed. For the first chapter,a detailed account of New Historicism, with its major concepts, historical views and its ideas on the relationship between literature and history will be presented. Also,Foucault’s theory of power and its influence on the theoretical development of New Historicism are also dealt with. In the second chapter, the background of Slaughterhouse Five will be discussed to show the important role of textual contextand to demonstrate the fact that realness constitutes an essential part of the novel’s fiction. In the next chapter, the novel’s reconstruction of history is dwelled upon,including the unique narrative modes in Slaughterhouse Five, the political connotations and the transcending of text over the relation between history and fiction.Then in the following chapter, the discussion turns to the political criticism in Slaughterhouse Five, with the analysis of the political relations in the novel and the deconstruction of grand history as our main concerns. Finally, the whole thesis comes to a natural conclusion. With the help of past researches, the thesis, from a New Historicist perspective, explores the relationship between history and reality in the author’s creation and also displays the intermingling and inter-blurring between literary text and history. Be it intermingling or inter-blurring, the anti-war mentality of the author is only more impressively expressed. The various narrative modes adopted by the author in the novel undoubtedly constitute a deconstruction of the relationship between history and text and demonstrate at the same time the political involvement of literarature.