In the novel Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut is able to unify a non-linear narrative by using time travel. Billy Pilgrim, Vonnegut’s main character, is constantly traveling back and forth his life experiences “paying random visits to all events in between” (SF 23). Consequently, the reader sees Billy’s life as a series of episodes without any chronological nature. This in essence is the structure of the novel, presenting us the traditional beginning, middle, and end in an untraditional manner.
The first piece of information that is given about Billy is that he has "come unstuck in time" (SF23). By using this sentence, Vonnegut is able to transform time from something that is ethereal to something that is not only tangible, but also malleable that he can now work with. The use of the word “unstuck” portrays a sense of freedom, which Vonnegut is now able to exploit. Vonnegut jumps Billy through time, allowing him to experience a mere fragment of a moment before sending him off again. One minute he is waiting for his father to teach him how to swim at the pool, the next he is marching through the forest. Ironically, the fragmentation of Billy’s life actually brings the most relevant aspects of his life closer together. This allows the reader to see all aspects holistically …show more content…
All of these events interweave in such a way to turn a seemingly chaotic story structure into a cohesive text. This spreads out the novel and forces the reader to see it as a whole rather than by the fragments that compose it. The use of “time travel” is how Billy copes with his memories of the bombing of Dresden. By the time, we reach the end of the novel no solution to the problem in the text comes up, belaboring the point that "there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre" (SF
The first piece of information that is given about Billy is that he has "come unstuck in time" (SF23). By using this sentence, Vonnegut is able to transform time from something that is ethereal to something that is not only tangible, but also malleable that he can now work with. The use of the word “unstuck” portrays a sense of freedom, which Vonnegut is now able to exploit. Vonnegut jumps Billy through time, allowing him to experience a mere fragment of a moment before sending him off again. One minute he is waiting for his father to teach him how to swim at the pool, the next he is marching through the forest. Ironically, the fragmentation of Billy’s life actually brings the most relevant aspects of his life closer together. This allows the reader to see all aspects holistically …show more content…
All of these events interweave in such a way to turn a seemingly chaotic story structure into a cohesive text. This spreads out the novel and forces the reader to see it as a whole rather than by the fragments that compose it. The use of “time travel” is how Billy copes with his memories of the bombing of Dresden. By the time, we reach the end of the novel no solution to the problem in the text comes up, belaboring the point that "there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre" (SF