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Unreliabile Narrator of Slaughterhouse-Five

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Kurt Vonnegut wrote Slaughterhouse- Five in a very different format compared to the regular format of beginning, climax and end narrative. The story jumps around scene to scene quite often through out the whole narrative. This makes the narrator untrustworthy because it is just little snippets of a whole story with no beginning, middle or end due to it being all thrown together as a jumble of different scenes written in paragraphs. The reader can read any part of the book and it will still make sense because it is all thrown together with no dramatic or surprising end. Soon it is realized that Slaughterhouse- Five seems to be an omniscient narration, where the author writes in 3rd person context and is “assumed to know everything connected with the story narrated (Abbott 239). But the author of Slaughterhouse- Five doesn’t stick to this format because he also uses first person in different scenes. The narrator tells before hand about important events and deaths that will occur further on in the story right when a new character is introduced. He doesn’t stick around to make it a surprise for the reader but spoils it right away leading to no surprising parts in the novel. The unreliability in the novel Slaughterhouse- Five comes for the change of narrator and the added benefactor that Billy, the main character and omniscient narrator has neurological damage. This leads to the reader not being about the rely on Billy because he is confused about the state he is in at all times and is ultimately unstuck in time. The very first chapter in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse- Five is nothing similar to the following 8 chapters that come following. In the first chapter the character is not formally introduced but talks about how he wants to write a war story. This character does not classify himself as Kurt Vonnegut but it is clear that he was also in the war and a part of the bombing of Dresden. This character begins to narrate the story of Billy Pilgrim in the second chapter. He wrote in first person in the first chapter. He began the whole story off with “All this happened, more or less” (Vonnegut 1). The story starts off with an unreliable phrase that makes the reader question the rest of the book as they go further on in this mixed and jumbled up story. The narrator goes on to say, “the war parts, anyway, are pretty much true” (1). The words the narrator is using is unreliable with the use of “pretty much” he is showing the reader that they are a bit true but most likely are not because he has changed things up. The narrator starts the book off from the first 2 lines in an unreliable fashion. The reader goes further on to reading the next few chapters that add even more unreliability. Billy believes he can travel in time. Therefore the novel Slaughterhouse- Five is written in a different style where the narrator jumps to different scenes randomly in each chapter. Billy knows everything that is ultimately going to happen in his life. He introduces it from the beginning of the story right when he meets a character or is in a specific setting. The narrator explains that Billy Pilgrim knew the plane he was boarding was going to crash, “he knew it was going to crash” but “ he didn’t want to make a fool of himself” and tell the other passengers of pilots (Vonnegut 196). Billy endangers the life of the other passengers on board

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