A programmatic text can be shown through the use of appropriate literary techniques, this is clearly seen within Kurt Vonnegut’s novel, Slaughterhouse five.
Specifically within the second chapter passage that features an excerpt from a letter Billy had written to the Ilium News Leader. This passage plays with ideas of time, particularly Billy Pilgrim’s ‘unstuck in time’ premise; it also features a sense of inevitability of life and death itself, using literary devices such as metaphors, repetition, satire, motifs, foreshadowing, and analogies, the passage manages to portray all the significant themes present as well as the episteme of which they are written.
Vonnegut skillfully stipulates a programmatic sequence through the reference to the
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Glotto puts forward the notion that the idea could portray time as an illusion and that humans cannot look at every moment simultaneously, unlike the aliens, otherwise known as Tralfamadorians, in his novel. She states, “Vonnegut uses science fiction mechanics because he is developing on the thought that aliens do exist, but they exist with a different outlook on life. He imagines an entire universe that requires an extensive amount of space travel to reach.”
Vonnegut approves this idea as he says, “It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever.” (Tally). The novels science fiction genre attempts to become the literature of ideas as Vonnegut creates another world through his writing, and creates a unique style of thinking that was relatively new to the society. (Glotto).
The passage refers to the major theme of time within Slaughterhouse Five and helps link together the passage with the rest of the text, by using literary devices Vonnegut manages to tie this section with the general structure of the novel and allows for the theme to be constantly