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This 5 page paper discusses some of the factors that make Slaughterhouse-Five a postmodern novel. Bibliography lists 2 sources.
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5 pages (~225 words per page)
File: KV32_HVthmsh5.rtf
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why it can be considered postmodern. Discussion Postmodernism: According to Burgess, postmodern fiction is "often and appropriately characterized by a concern with ontological categories, an exploration of the boundaries between
fact and fiction, the world and the text (177). (The word "ontological" means concerned with the nature of human existence and what it means to be human.) Vonnegut has certainly
blurred the lines between fact and fiction and the "world and the text" by inserting himself into the story. Or at least, by making what seem to be guest appearances
in his novel. He writes the entire first chapter in first person, explaining why hes going to write the novel, as well as what the first and last lines will
be: "It begins like this: Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time. It ends like this: Poo-tee-weet?" (Vonnegut 29). A reader turns the page and sees: "Listen: Billy Pilgrim
has come unstuck in time." Vonnegut has completely wiped out the dividing line between the world in which he and his readers live and that in which Billy Pilgrim moves.
Postmodernism also provides several ways of looking at the same thing. According to Lyotard, there is a distinction "between the time it takes the painter to paint the picture (time
of production), the time required to look at and understand the work (time of consumption) [and] the time to which the work refers (a moment, a scene, a situation, a
sequence of events: the time of the diegetic referent, of the story told by the picture)" (Burgess 177). This is sort of like watching someone bake a cake, eating it,
and watching oneself eat it all at the same time. It can only be accomplished if time has no meaning to the individual involved, which is precisely Billy Pilgrims situation;
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