Dispersal of time and trauma in postmodern novel: Slaughterhouse-Five

Abstract

Wars cause trauma and disruption of temporal sequencing, leading to fragmentation of memory in survivors. This fragmentation leads to negative changes in the victims' posttraumatic relationships and character traits. Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) is a novel about war trauma in which WWII is satirized with the use of a nonlinear narrative and post-war traumatic self. The novel presents to the reader how an innocent man survives in a drastic war atmosphere by chance and how his life changes after the war in both a playful and critical manner. Although Slaughterhouse-Five broadly delineates the theme of the destructiveness of war, specifically Vonnegut draws attention to the distorted memory of a traumatized young man with an ironic stance. Thereby, presenting the reader an opportunity to delve into a mind in which the compulsory conditions about temporality and liminality are abolished, Vonnegut turns his narrative into a play that reflects both joy and suffering owing to the collapse of sequence in time. Making extensive use of the means of metafiction, the author reveals his war experiences and the hidden sides of WWII. Therefore, this study aims to analyze Vonnegut’s ironic approach to war trauma, distorted perception of time, and their reflection on fiction in a postmodern sense.