Inspecting elements of science fiction and postmodern genre in the novel, Slaughterhouse Five by Vonnegut. Definition of Science Fiction and Postmodern in Literature.

3. INTRODUCTION TO SCIENCE FICTION GENRE
• It’s based on scientific principles and technology.
(e.g.: technology in Brave New World)
• It may make predictions about life in the future.
(e.g.: Dystopia predicted in 1984)
• It often deals with aliens or with life on other worlds.
(e.g.: Billy’s abduction by aliens in Slaughterhouse 5)
• It can comment on important issues in society.
(e.g.: consequences of war in Slaughterhouse 5)

4. • Science fiction includes novels and short
stories that represent an imagined reality that
is radically different in its nature and
functioning from the world of our ordinary
experience. The plot creates situations
different from those of both the present day
and the known past.

5. SETTING
• Often the setting is another
planet, or this earth projected
into the future, or an imagined
parallel universe.

6. • These stories involve partially true-partially
fictitious laws or theories of science. It
should not be completely unbelievable,
because it then ventures into the genre
fantasy.

7. • Science fiction texts also include a
human element, explaining what
effect new discoveries, happenings
and scientific developments will
have on us in the future.

8. EXAMPLES
• Some well-known 20th century science
fiction texts include 1984 by George
Orwell, Brave New World by Alduous
Huxley, and The Fountainhead by Ayn
Rand.

10. • Billy and Eliot Rosewater read science fiction
because their own realities no longer make
sense to them.

11. • They need invented realities that work by
different rules because their own lives have
lost meaning.

12. • Slaughterhouse-
Five’s main story
deals with Billy
Pilgrim’s memory
of the war
supported by
such unrealistic
elements as a
kind of time warp,
extraterrestrials
and their four
dimensional
points of view

13. • These science
fictional
elements are
actually the
lies Billy relies
on in order to
reduce, in his
recollection of
the air raid on
Dresden.

14. • Critics examine how
Vonnegut structured the
book: “he uses the science-
fiction motif of time-travel
to break up not only the
subjective experience but
also the objective
measurement of time and
thereby to spatialize his tale”

15. • Slaughterhouse-Five
uses science fiction the
same way it uses war,
both as a plot point and
as an object of
philosophical
examination.

16. • The level of self-
consciousness that
Slaughterhouse-Five
brings to the genres of
autobiography, war
drama, and science
fiction all point to a
fourth and final genre:
the postmodern
novel.

17. • The constant confusion
about when – or even
whether – the different
events of the novel
happen mean that
readers are constantly
kept at some distance
from Billy Pilgrim and
his life story.

18. • By using the author as
a character in the
book and by telling
Billy's story out of
order, the novel itself
keeps reminding us
that Billy's story is
fiction

19. • This manner of
storytelling indicates a
degree of skepticism
about the idea of a
unified self or the
possibility of realistic
narration that
characterizes
postmodernism.

20. How Is Slaughterhouse Five
a Postmodernist Text?

21. • Kurt Vonnegut Jr. is a postmodernist writer
who exhibits this with his adept uses of a non-
linear narrative, metafictional technique,
elliptical structure, and irony with touch of
playfulness and dark humor.
• He created a pastiche of fiction, nonfiction,
science fiction, and satire in the novel
Slaughterhouse-five

22. • It talks about writing (metafiction).
• Plays with the criteria of time, lack of a linear
narrative (fragmentation).
• Explores reality and truth.
• Plays with the notion of framebreaking:
Vonnegut; Narrative; and Vonnegut as the
Protagonist (questionable narrator).
• Explores two different genres - History and
Science-fiction.
• A Response to Modernist Literature.

23. Response to Modernism
Slaughterhouse-five is a response to the despair
seen in modernism in that it uses a playful
satirization of war to ultimately convey its
senselessness and painful impacts

24. • The placement of Billy and an adult film star
into a Tralfamadorian zoo provides some
comic relief and starkly contrasts the wartime
settings.
• The dark humor seen as a convention of
postmodernism is used almost continually.

25. • The novel’s strategies of satire clearly
address war but it’s also a postmodernist
piece that attempts to satirize everything at
once, which is almost the same thing as
satirizing nothing in particular

26. Fragmentation
Kurt Vonnegut uses
fragmentation of time,
structure and character in
order to unify his non-
linear narrative. Vonnegut
moves Billy rapidly, having
him experience a mere
fragment of his life before
whisking him off again.
This creates a collage
effect in the novel, which
is made up of bits and
pieces of Billy's life.

27. Fragmentation
One minute Billy is marching
through a forest and the next
he is waiting at a public pool
for his father to teach him
how to swim. This constant
fragmentation of Billy's life
serves, ironically, to unify
Billy's character for the
reader. By going back and
forth in Billy's life the reader is
able to see a whole picture of
what Billy is actually like
instead of just one fragment
of his personality.

28. Narrator/Character
• In addition to being the
narrator, Vonnegut is
present within the text as
the narrative's central
character in the first and
last chapters.

29. Paradox
• Paradox is also used is
the story such as “a
blowtorch that did not
warm” or “scalding
rain” [water coming
from a showerhead is
not literally rain].

30. THE END

31. Online Resources:
• M.H. Abrams A Glossary of Literary Terms
• www.eduplace.com/activity/pdf/scifiction.pdf
• http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/lesson_images/lesso
n927/SciFiDefinition.pdf
• www.gradesaver.com › Slaughterhouse Five › Study Guide
• www.shmoop.com › Literature › Slaughterhouse-Five › Analysis
• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodern_literature
• http://www.unask.com/website/work99/bp3/laura/postmodern/In
dex.html
• https://suite.io/griffin-keedy
• http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/metafiction
• http://www.enotes.com/homework-help/provide-analyse-
examples-key-literary-language-316199
• http://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/s/slaughterhousefive/critical-
essays/the-presence-of-the-narrator-in-slaughterhousefive
• http://www.123helpme.com/view.asp?id=19269