Kurt Vonnegut Research Paper

Kurt Vonnegut’s works are part of postmodernism. We can find the typical themes and techniques of the postmodernism literature in his novels and short stories. The experiences of the WW II are essential similarly to other postmodern artists. The traumatizing event of the bombing of Dresden marked his style, autobiographical elements and other allusions to this catastrophe are present in almost each of his works. His works could be approached from different viewpoints and analysed in the view of trauma theories, the treatment of time and history, the stylistic features that are embedded in almost all of his works, just to mention a few. Slaughterhouse Five, the novel which made Kurt Vonnegut famous, is considered to be a masterpiece by critics.

Vonnegut chose his own memories combined with a science fiction story to make his traumatizing war experiences possible to narrate. Though his novel is highly metafictional, its main theme is not only novel writing itself, but it has a deeper meaning, a message which is strongly related to the tragic events caused by the absurdity of war. Vonnegut himself admits in an interview that: “It’s the first one of my books that’s been about something that really happened, the first remotely autobiographical book, and my books are tending in that direction; they’re becoming more and more autobiographical.” (Allen

Historians have often criticized this novel because of the inaccuracy of the information provided. Besides his own war experiences Vonnegut used David Irving’s work The Destruction of Dresden as a source. As some of the historian consider it today, on ideological grounds this work grately exaggerates the murder and devastation caused by the Allied attacks, and intends to present German society and its leaders less culpable for being complicit in the exterminationist programme of the Third Reich (Lawler 123). In the paratextual credits to his novel Vonnegut acknowledged using The Destruction of Dresden and having had permission to quote from it. And he quotes extensively from Irving’s book, more specifically from the preface to that book written by Air Marshal sir Robert Saundby, who admitted that the bombing had not been a military necessity and more over that the tragic death of 135,000 people in Dresden made it more deadly than the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima.

“The advocates of nuclear disarmament seem to believe that, if they could achieve their aim, war would become tolerable and decent. They would do well to read this book and ponder the fate of Dresden, where 135,000 people died as the result of an attack with conventional weapons.” (Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five