A Study Of The Spatial Narrative In Kurt Vonnegut's Novel Slaughterhouse-Five

American writer Kurt Vonnegut's representative novel Slaughterhouse-Five reproduces the Dresden Massacre of World War II and the post-war social reality in the United States,using the travel experiences of a schizophrenic patient Billy through different time and space.In the text,the author intends to break the traditional linear narrative structure,instead of focusing on the plot and logic,but lays emphasis on overlapping and interspersing of different time and space,which causes the scene constantly changing back and forth and the diachrony of time replaced by the synchrony of space.By means of collage,juxtaposition,repetition,montage and other techniques,various units of meaning such as details,snippets,and imagery are scattered throughout the text.Readers must interpret the text through repeated reading in order to obtain the overall impression of the text and understand the author's concern and disclosure of history and reality.In the thesis,the spatial narrative theory of Joseph Frank,Gabriel Zoran and others are used to analyze the novel Slaughterhouse-Five,to examine the space types,space images and metaphors in the novel,to analyze the multiple use of spatial narrative techniques and the construction of the spatial form,and to put forward readers' interpretation of the aesthetic characteristics of spatial form novels.The thesis consists of three parts,including introduction,main body part and conclusion.The introduction section introduces the writer and his fiction,summarizes the research status of Slaughterhouse-Five at home and abroad,and briefly explains the main content of the spatial narrative theory adopted in this paper.There are three chapters in the main text.The first chapter analyzes three space types in the text,topographical space,social space and psychological space,and points out the meanings of the three spaces.The space mentioned in the text is not only the place where the characters exist and the story takes place,but also has the role of promoting the process of the story and deepening the theme of the novel.The second chapter analyzes spatial narrative strategies from the perspective of the author's creation,mainly including time-space juxtaposition,fragmented plot and repetitive narration.The use of these narrative strategies breaks the original linear narrative mode and abandons the causal connection between plots,thus making the novel show obvious spatiality.The third chapter focuses on the aesthetic perception of spatial narrative from the perspective of readers' acceptance.The author has a mind to break the chronological order in the novel,and readers must regroup and unite the scattered independent novel fragments and non-logically chaotic meaning units to achieve an overall understanding of the work through repeated reading and reflexive reference,thus establishing the final multiple spatial narrative structure.In the conclusion part,the thesis concludes that Slaughterhouse-Five written by Vonnegut can be regarded as a novel of spatial form.The multi-level space images and space types not only promote the plot development,but also help to express the theme.The cross-application of spatial narrative techniques deconstructs the traditional narrative methods,which makes it difficult for readers to understand and interpret the text.In the process of reading and interpretation,readers interpret the text through the reading mechanism of reflexive reference,so as to perceive the aesthetic effect brought by spatial narrative.