The use of postmodern narrative style that Vonnegut chose to narrate his story is also present in Slaughterhouse-Five through the use of language or diction. One of the main characteristics of postmodern style and language is its simplicity of the chosen words, settings and tone to represent a story. The role of language in postmodernism is not only used to represent the reality as it is but also to show that their idea of reality can shape the way people who read them look at the reality.
Narrative diction is determined by Vonnegut’s choice of words. Diction is an important narrative mode because through diction Vonnegut makes the reader feel and see what he wants them to feel and see. Vonnegut’s diction throughout the novel stays the same
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The circuit judge there accused the novel of being “depraved, immoral, psychotic, vulgar, and anti-Christian.”
In 1973, a school board in North Dakota immolated 32 copies of the book in the high school's coal burner. In an interview by David Hayman for The Paris Review , Vonnegut stated:
My books are being thrown out of school libraries all over the country—because they’re supposedly obscene. "I’ve seen letters to small-town newspapers that put Slaughterhouse-Five in the same class with Deep Throat and Hustler magazine. How could anybody masturbate to Slaughterhouse-Five?”
One of the main reasons Slaughterhouse-Five was banned from schools and libraries was the fact that it contained explicit and rough language however if we read the novel carefully we’ll understand that the use of explicit words in Slaughterhouse-Five is minimal and they are used in the conversation between soldier, or as narrative tool to describe characters or situation. Personally speaking I’ve counted the number of times the explicit words appeared in the Slaughterhouse-Five and it’s not more than sixteen times in the entire