Identity In Slaughterhouse Five

Vonnegut's fiction exposes the reality of the Vietnam War as dehumanizing and horrific towards one's ability to acheive individuality and liberation to form an identity. In Kurt Vonnegut's 1969 anti-war novel "Slaughterhouse Five" (SF) he shares many truths of fiction from his own experiences such as confinement is a barrier for personal growth, collectivism is not the key to acheiving liberation and identity is ultimately determined one's ability to detach themselves from others. This is evident as he manipulates the formal elements of the novel to condemn the reality of the Vietnam War as a distrustful and intolerant context. Fundamentally, Vonnegut wants us to understand his struggles of personal confinement, the problem with patriotism …show more content…
Vonnegut uses third-person narration to introduce O'Hare's wife Mary, who, "like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from the things she found in the gift shop". The use of third-person narration provides an objective tone, showing how Mary is representative of the American people's distress. This reference to a real person and a real setting symbolically represents Vonnegut's personal feeling of confinement while in Dresden. This manipulation of setting alludes to a larger historical notion of confinement that Americans experienced during the Vietnam War as they were struggling to accept the deaths of their loved ones like Vonnegut due to an unequal and intolerant society they lived in. Furthermore, it criticizes how our capitalist and egalitarian society is a paradox because of the constant conflict it faces today particularly in the Middle East and Myanmar where individuals are being suppressed and restrained by their own leaders from …show more content…
He demonstrates this in Billy's aphorism " Everything is all right and everybody has to do what exactly he does,". This aphorism ironically reflects the distorted structure of the Vietnam War due to the brutal conflict between communist and capitalist powers that resulted in murder, chemical warfare and bombs. This is symbolic of the clashing between collectivist and individualistic ideals that were at Vonnegut's time and influenced the plot structure of his novel. Vonnegut's intention with his distorted plot structure fundamentally challenges the collectivist values and even capitalist systems today as both impractical because it is forcing individuals to conform to society's expectations, and that ultimately it could lead them to the same miserable fate as he