My Slaughterhouse

Writing, or typing in this case, an essay about post modernism and Slaughterhouse 5 is pretty much just writing about the same thing. Kurt Vonnegut was so in tune with post modernism that it could have been vomiting it straight from the book onto your face while reading. Everything so far that I know about post modernism was taught to me by reading this book and studying the elements of it. Post-modernism is a school of thought or a tendency in contemporary culture which rejects modernism. It is characterized by the rejection of objective truth and global cultural narrative.

Kurt Vonnegut wrote a book in which one is not permitted to laugh and yet still kept the book sad but without tears. One of the biggest elements of post modernism seen in this book is time travel. One moment you are on Earth in the middle of WW2 and then next you are on a brand new world named Trafalmadore. Other such things as being able to see in the fourth dimension where death and life mean nothing and being put in a zoo by extraterrestrial beings to be observed describe what post modernism is.

In the story, Kurt Vonnegut writes out the life of a man and Optometrist named Billy Pilgrim and his struggles in WW2 where he experiences German prison camps and the bombing of Dresden that wipes out the whole town. While being told his story you are also being teleported back in time, then to the future, then back and forth and on and on. Billy experiences everything from being in war, to going to another planet, and even being killed. So it goes.

So far post modernism has been a big rush for me, it flew by and I believe that the whole class is still trying to figure out what it really is. It can be described as a "no rules" type of policy that applies to many of today's modern literature, art, philosophy, architecture, fiction, cultures, and literary criticism. Post modernism is most common today and you can see it virtually anywhere that you go from Facebook to high school.

Post modernism and Slaughterhouse 5 go hand in hand because Slaughterhouse 5 uses all of the core elements of post modernism and applies them in a unique way. Kurt Vonnegut had engineered a masterpiece when he had finished the book. Billy Pilgrim experiences this world first hand in this book about time travel, WW2, the bombing of Dresden, Optometry, and an alien planet where beings can see in the fourth dimension.