AN EVALUATION OF POSTMODERNIST AESTHETICS IN KURT VONNEGUT'S SLAUGHTERHOUSE - FIVE

Abstract

In his address at the Library of Congress in 1963, Saul Bellow, the celebrated
American writer aptly commented on postmodernist American fiction: 'American novels are
filled with complaints over the misfortune of the sovereign self '. It is true that the idea of the
'self' received a jolt with the two World Wars and the Russian Revolution of 1917. The
horrendous German tragedy of 1939 saw the reduction of thousands of human beings into
heaps of bones. The individual struggling hard to maintain his identity and the 'self' being
asked to prepare itself for sacrifice are some of the salient features of the situation reflected in
contemporary American fiction. The prefix 'post' doesn't imply a new era; rather, it indicates
a reaction, in the wake of the Second World War, against absolute systems of knowledge and
philosophical certainty which adorned the foundations of Modernism