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Irony and satire in slaughterhouse five
Irony and satire in slaughterhouse five
Discuss how vonnegut uses postmodern features to explore billy pilgrim’s ptsd
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Hypothesis: Kurt Vonnegut uses dark humour in the novel Slaughterhouse Five as a powerful anti-war tool.
Dark humour is a joke or humour that makes a normally serious situation seem funny. Dictionary.com defines it as “combining the morbid and grotesque with humour and farce to give a disturbing effect and convey the absurdity and cruelty of life.” This definition definitely fits the type of humour used by Kurt Vonnegut in Slaughterhouse Five. After reading Slaughterhouse Five I concluded that Kurt Vonnegut uses dark humour and satire as a powerful anti-war tool. After reading sections I would find myself laughing only to stop when I realised the horror of what I was laughing about. To support or disprove my hypothesis I will use critical responses to Slaughterhouse Five written by Dennis Stanton Smith (1997), Peter C Kunze (2012) and
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The hobo talks to Billy and keeps on saying to him that “I’ll be fine. I’ve been in worse places than this, I’ve been hungrier than this, this ain’t so bad” The next morning the hobo is dead, “So it goes,” says the narrator. The irony of this makes us laugh when we are reading the book but we realise afterwards that we shouldn’t find this death funny. During the Second World War many prisoners of war died in transportation but none of them should be considered humorous. By making us laugh Kurt Vonnegut makes us think twice on what we are laughing about and rethink the actual horror, not humour that war
"In Slaughterhouse Five, -- Or the Children's Crusade, Vonnegut delivers a complete treatise on the World War II bombing of Dresden. The main character, Billy Pilgrim, is a very young infantry scout* who is captured in the Battle of the Bulge and quartered in a Dresden slaughterhouse where he and other prisoners are employed in the production of a vitamin supplement for pregnant women. During the February 13, 1945, firebombing by Allied aircraft, the prisoners take shelter in an underground meat locker. When they emerge, the city has been levelled and they are forced to dig corpses out of the rubble. The story of Billy Pilgrim is the story of Kurt Vonnegut who was captured and survived the firestorm in which 135,000 German civilians perished, more than the number of deaths in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. Robert Scholes sums up the theme of Slaughterhouse Five in the New York Times Book Review, writing: 'Be kind. Don't hurt. Death is coming for all of us anyway, and it is better to be Lot's wife looking back through salty eyes than the Deity that destroyed those cities of the plain in order to save them.' The reviewer concludes that 'Slaughterhouse Five is an extraordinary success. It is a book we need to read, and to reread.' "The popularity of Slaughterhouse Five is due, in part, to its timeliness; it deals with many issues that were vital to the late sixties: war, ecology, overpopulation, and consumerism. Klinkowitz, writing in Literary Subversions.New American Fiction and the Practice of Criticism, sees larger reasons for the book's success: 'Kurt Vonnegut's fiction of the 1960s is the popular artifact which may be the fairest example of American cultural change. . . . Shunned as distastefully low-brow . . . and insufficiently commercial to suit the exploitative tastes of high-power publishers, Vonnegut's fiction limped along for years on the genuinely democratic basis of family magazine and pulp paperback circulation. Then in the late 1960s, as the culture as a whole exploded, Vonnegut was able to write and publish a novel, Slaughterhouse Five, which so perfectly caught America's transformative mood that its story and structure became best-selling metaphors for the new age. '"Writing in Critique, Wayne D. McGinnis comments that in Slaughterhouse Five, Vonnegut 'avoids framing his story in linear narration, choosing a circular structure.
Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five as an Antiwar Novel. War can affect and inspire people to many degrees. Kurt Vonnegut was inspired by war to write Slaughterhouse Five. which is a unique book referred to sometimes as a science fiction or semi-autobiographical novel.
Being an anti-war novel, his book is filled with shocking events and gruesome deaths. But Vonnegut portrays death as trivial. Every time someone dies or something bad happens, the reader might think " oh my gosh, that's awful!"
... Vonnegut’s writing is unique because “the narrator offers a very different kind of war story—one which combines fact and fiction” (Jarvis 98). With the combination of fact and fiction, Vonnegut successfully connected events from WWII to the political references and societal conflicts during the Vietnam War. Works Cited Barringer, Mark, and Tom Wells. “The Anti-War Movement in the United States.”
Kurt Vonnegut uses a combination of dark humor and irony in Slaughterhouse-Five. As a result, the novel enables the reader to realize the horrors of war while simultaneously laughing at some of the absurd situations it can generate. Mostly, Vonnegut wants the reader to recognize the fact that one has to accept things as they happen because no one can change the inevitable.
In conclusion Slaughterhouse-Five and The Things They Carried are two successful anti-war novels. Slaughterhouse-Five is over the top with its science fiction and illusion, while The Things They Carried is serious and reflective. These books are different in tone and the two authors take similar routes to the same goal. Both books are based on the experiences of the authors themselves. The two books run parallel and tell the terrors of war. These books are both paintings of human nature in the perspective of war and by showing the behavior of humans at war. These books effectively send their anti-war messages to readers.
Slaughterhouse Five is not a book that should be glanced over and discarded away like a dirty rag. Slaughterhouse Five is a book that should be carefully analyzed and be seen as an inspiration to further improve the well-being of mankind. Vonnegut makes it clear that an easy way to improve mankind is to see war not as a place where legends are born, but rather, an event to be avoided. Intelligent readers and critics alike should recognize Vonnegut’s work and see to it that they make an effort to understand the complexities behind the human condition that lead us to war.
Throughout his career, Kurt Vonnegut has used writing as a tool to convey penetrating messages and ominous warnings about our society. He skillfully combines vivid imagery with a distinctly satirical and anecdotal style to explore complex issues such as religion and war. Two of his most well known, and most gripping, novels that embody this subtle talent are Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse-Five. Both books represent Vonnegut’s genius for manipulating fiction to reveal glaring, disturbing and occasionally redemptive truths about human nature. On the surface, Cat’s Cradle and Slaughterhouse-Five are dramatically different novels, each with its own characters, symbols, and plot. However, a close examination reveals that both contain common themes and ideas. Examining and comparing the two novels and their presentation of different themes provides a unique insight into both the novels and the author – allowing the reader to gain a fuller understanding of Vonnegut’s true meaning.
Black Humor in Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle The phrase Black Humor has the broad meaning of poking "fun at subjects considered deadly serious or even taboo by some"2. This definition is simple, and yet embodies an important idea that is often lost in more complex definitions: the idea that Black Humor can actually be "fun", and provoke laughter. This is not, of course, the only important aspect of the term, and I shall explore some of the other important defining features of Black Humor before moving on to discuss its use in Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle3. Many critics have attempted definitions of Black Humor, none of them entirely successfully. The most significant recurring features of these definitions are that Black Humor works with: absurdity, ironic detachment4; opposing moral views held in equipoise, humanity's lack of a sense of purpose in the unpredictable nuclear age, the realization of the complexity of moral and aesthetic experience which affects the individual's ability to choose a course of action5; and a playing with the reader's ideas of reality6.
In conclusion, Slaughterhouse-Five is an anti-war novel because Vonnegut, the character, says it is in the first chapter, the terrible damage it left on Billy, and how it exposes war's horrifying practices. Knowing these elements, one might wonder why people still have wars. Although these anti-war novels cannot completely stop wars, they are important. The role that such novels play is one of raising awareness of war's actions and wrongdoings. Since the role of the novels is important, authors should continue to write them to keep people informed and educated about a problem of such a huge magnitude.
Similarly, Slaughterhouse-Five runs rampant with absurdly ironic scenarios. Some of the best examples of the novel's ironic black humor are the absurd plights of the hobo and Edgar Derby. A 40-year-old former hobo is captured along with Billy Pilgrim and the other soldiers. Despite the poor conditions, he continuously assures the others that things "ain't so bad,” that he’s been hungrier, and that he’s been in far worse places. Despite his seeming optimism, though, he dies after nine days:
Like Heller, Vonnegut, a renowned satirist and science-fiction author, based this work on his experiences fighting in Europe, but as an infantryman in France. Initially setting out to write a novelization of his war experiences, Vonnegut instead creates a brutally accurate account of imprisonment by German forces after the Battle of the Bulge and survival during the firebombing of Dresden, mixed with a surreal science fiction allegory of alien abduction and time travel. Furthermore, Vonnegut’s intent was to never glorify war or conflict, especially fought by young men with delusions of glory, inspiring the full title of “Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children’s Crusade; A Duty-Dance with
In Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut uses absurdity to satirize war. Vonnegut uses free will to satirize war. Billy didn’t know how to swim when he was a kid and that cost him when his dad pushed him in the deep end of the pool and left him to drown. Instead of finding his way out of the pool, he stays there because of free will. As a result of Billy staying in the pool, he is rescued by his father moments afte.
Kurt Vonnegut: Dark Humor in American Literature Kurt Vonnegut was a well-known author for his dark humor and wit in Slaughterhouse Five and Cat’s Cradle mocking war, science, and religion making the reader understand the horrors through humor. According to Webster Dictionary, black humor is humor marked by the use of usually morbid, ironic, grotesquely comic episodes. (Webster) Humor is an almost physiological response to fear and frustration. (Cargas) Comedy appeals are made to the head, not the heart and because of the coldly rational approach; comedy lifts us out of the emotional aspects of an idea.
Vonnegut’s humor and satirical elements have become ubiquitous in his work. His sense of humor developed at an early age: “he first learned to be funny at the family dinner table. As the youngest child in the family, the only way he could get anyone to listen to him… was telling jokes” (Farrell 5). He would also tune into popular radio comedians and perform slapstick comedy with his older sister, Alice (Farrell 5). Vonnegut’s lifelong pessimism fueled his darker humor.