Evading and Addressing Trauma: The Paradoxical Nature of Escapism in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five

Abstract

Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) is known as an anti-war novel but does not only pertain to the subject of war, and its aftermath, for the genre of science fiction is also incorporated. This thesis analyses the mixture of war and science fiction in relation to trauma and memory studies, focusing on how science fiction – and literature in general – may help in coping with trauma. The thesis will do this by asking the question of how Slaughterhouse-Five represents the paradox of both evading and addressing trauma through the employment of science fictional fantasies in the working through of the experience of war. This will then be linked to the broader concept of how literature might aid in coping with trauma. The thesis does so by close-reading and paralleling events as outlined in both the parts concerned with war and those with science fiction, uncovering the paradox of escapism as presented in Billy’s story in Slaughterhouse-Five. This paradox shows that science fiction is used as both a way to, in part, evade and, also, address the trauma of war, which illustrates how reading literature can be used as a form of bibliotherapy through how it provides a space for processing trauma.