Cultural Memory and Narratives of Trauma: An Analysis of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five

Abstract

Kurt Vonnegut’s masterpiece Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) is a seminal work in trauma studies that illustrates how a catastrophic historical event, like war, ruptures both individual and collective consciousness. The novel revolves around the bombing of Dersden during World War II, an incident in which the writer himself is part of and has survived. The novel examines the intersection of personal psychological trauma and cultural memory using unconventional narrative techniques of fragmentation, which reflects the broken self of the protagonist and his friends, who are caught in the slaughterhouse. This paper analyses how the text rejects traditional, linear chronologies and resorts to fragmented, speculative narrative to mirror the impact of war on the human psyche as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and survivor's guilt.