Explacation
Slaughterhouse Five- Rilee Racine & Grace Chilton
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In the first chapter of Kurt Vonnegut's novel, Slaughterhouse Five, he introduces his journey of writing the anti-war story through a surrendered tone of nonchalance. The syntactical structure that Vonnegut uses is surprisingly simple and primarily perceived as blunt and careless. However, a deeper look into the text reveals that his use of asyndeton, polysyndeton, and parataxis culminates to create a raw complexity that gives voice to his feelings regarding the gruesome war that he was witness to. In arrangements such as "He is short and I am tall. We were Mutt and Jeff in the war. We were captured together in the war. I told him who I was on the telephone. He had no trouble believing it" (Vonnegut 4), he creates a crispness and frankness that guides the reader through his recollection and the actuality of his experiences. Vonnegut chooses his simple syntax in order to illustrate the harsh reality that is war while concluding with his acceptance of the fact that war, as well as death, are regrettably inevitable.