Literary Techniques In Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five

In in the black comedy novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut recalls and discusses the destruction of Dresden through the narration of the main character Billy Pilgrim, in order to highlight his perspective regarding the horrors of the war. When Dresden gets bombed, Vonnegut— who injects himself in his own novel as Billy— experiences sadness and sympathy rather than anger and resentfulness. Billy’s misery— due to being ambushed and witnessing the gruesomeness of the war— leads him to becoming “stuck in time”, reliving random moments of his life, as a young prisoner in Dresden, as a middle-aged optometrist, and captive of aliens for an outer space zoo exhibit. Vonnegut tries to reveal the underlying idea that humans become overwhelmed …show more content…
Vonnegut emphasizes these methods, denoting Slaughterhouse-Five as an anti-war novel, by harnessing vital literary techniques, such as, irony and repetition. One of the most habitually used literary devices that Vonnegut applies to his novel is repetition—which he reiterates refrains suddenly after speaking of a death or war—to avoid focusing on the egregiousness of the events in his life, showing his philosophy on how to deal with these circumstances. For instance, throughout the entire novel, one of the phrases Vonnegut repeats the most is “so it goes.” It is first shown when Vonnegut remembers the story in the Gideon Bible that discussed the destruction and conquer of Sodom and Gomorrah. At the thought of this, Vonnegut’s only one reaction is “so it goes” (21). When Vonnegut and Billy, remember any death or horrid moment in their past, present, future, they show their attitude of free will, understanding that some things are unchangeable and that people must accept the concept of predestination. Secondly, because Billy is constantly surrounded by the suffering of the war,—just as Vonnegut was— his only way to rationalize his experience at the beginning and end of the novel is by stating,