Stop the Clocks : Vonnegut’ s Conception of Time in Slaughterhouse-Five

Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), Kurt Vonnegut’s representative work, is the novel of time. The author often asserts his unique sense of time with his own narration in the metafictional Chapter 1. From the second chapter, he uses a uniquely fragmented narrative structure that reflects his view of time. This structure affects the protagonist Billy Pilgrim’s experience of time as follows: “Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time . . . Billy is spastic in time . . . He is in a constant state of stage fright . . .” (23). The Tralfamadorian view of time Billy is influenced by is also related to Vonnegut’s conception of time. In this paper, therefore, I will discuss Vonnegut’s treatment of time in Slaughterhouse-Five. My purpose is to examine two points: 1) the Tralfamadorian view of time in relation to the dismantlement of time in the novel, and 2) the narrative devices used by the author. Both concern themselves with how memories are perceived. This paper deals with the latter especially in detail. Slaughterhouse-Five’s narrative mode is allied with the stream-of consciousness technique. This technique is an attempt to represent human consciousness more realistically by attempting to describe the way we perceive time (namely our psychological time) instead of the “objective” time read on the clocks. Yet, there is a difference between the stream of consciousness in The Sound and the Fury and the narration in Slaughterhouse-Five. In Faulkner’s novel, scene changes from the recollections of memories to the present time are located within the focused character’s consciousness. On the other hand, in Vonnegut’s novel, memories are not mediated by human consciousness, and they are connected by the place where the events happen. Hence the events in memories become spatialized. Bearing in mind that the act of remembering is largely influenced by the unconscious, the spatialization of time highlights Vonnegut’s realistic depiction of the unconscious more precisely. I regard the narration in Slaughterhouse-Five as an unconscious stream of consciousness