Scarica Kurt Vonnegut mappa concettuale in inglese e più Schemi e mappe concettuali in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! KURT VONNEGUT • He’s an American author, born in Indianapolis, in Indiana. • He’s one of the most original American novelists. He fights in Europe in WW2 and was captured by German. As a prisoner he witnessed the destruction of Dresden by allied bomber in February 1945. • His most important play is SLUAGHTERHOUSE-FIVE, published in 1969. • It’s partly autobiographical, partly science-fiction. The protagonist BILLY UPLIGRIM survives the Dresden bombing by hiding in the underground cellar of the slaughterhouse where he and other American prisoners are forced to work. ➢ At the end of the war, Billy goes back to studying optometry in his native town, gets married and has 2 children. ➢ He suffers of a NERVOUS BREAKDOWN. After suffering brain damage in an airplane crash, he starts telling that he was KIDNAPPED by ALIENS and taken to a planet called TRAFALMADORE, in the fourth dimension. The novel doesn’t have a chronological plot. It’s a sort of mosaic of many short scenes happening at different times. It’s not strictly a DISTOPIAN NOVEL: o It is based on the author’s experience and o It has a SCIENCE-FICTIONAL subplot in which the protagonist is kidnapped by aliens. Vonnegut builds the novel as a collage of separate episodes, often surreal and humorous, producing disorienting effect on the reader. ❖ HE SPREADS HIS ANTI-WAR MESSAGE. Vonnegut’s comment on the title page suggests that this narrative is “SCHIZOPHRENIC”. Slaughterhouse-Five’s central topic is the horror of Dresden bombing. Billy, as a soldier is dislocated in a system where there is no REWARD, PUNISHMENT and no JUSTICE. ➢ He is unable to find peace of mind because of the trauma he suffered in Dresden. ➢ At the end, Billy, reconciles this trauma with the acceptance of the Trafalmadorian doctrine that says he cannot change the past, the present or the future. In the final analysis Vonnegut suggests that life is like a simple meaningless limerick(filastrocca) that never ends because it repeats himself endlessly. With Slaughterhouse-Five the novel’s traditional form changes. Vonnegut offers us a MULTIFACETED, MANY-DIMENSIONAL view of both fantasy and reality. For theme all events coexist simultaneously and it’s possible to move backward and forward in time. That’s what happens to Billy in the course of the novel. PLOT TOPICS
