ENL 10C: “A Metafictional History: New Historical Context through Metafictional Narratives”

Jolene Patricia Brown

Dr. M. Stratton

ENL 10C

27 May 2010

A Metafictional History:

New Historical Context through Metafictional Narratives

History is made up of perspectives; an event recorded in history becomes entirely reliant upon the perspectives of those who witness it, and then record their memories of the event for future generations. As historical events become more global it is harder for art and literature to represent the scale of perspective necessary to give the impact of an event, and make a reader understand the magnitude of an event on a massive scale. Literature until the twentieth century was (generally) limited to one perspective which can portray only one memory of an event. To more accurately portray an event like the bombing of Dresden with more depth and accuracy an author would need to explore a different way of giving perspective to it in order to more fully represent what the author feels is the true event. Since one cannot incorporate thousands of perspectives into a single narrative, the author can instead explore the event by using metafiction and temporal distortions. These literary tactics serve to disorient the reader, thereby giving an emotional reaction necessary to make the reader more aware of the disorientation of the event being narrated. The novel Slaughterhouse-Five distorts the reality of the reader and the novel precisely because the author wants to make the history of Dresden more real: by establishing a chronology that cannot be represented in reality, Slaughterhouse-Five challenges the reader to piece together not only the events of the novel, but also the events of history itself; a process that gives the reader more insight into the challenges of representing history as more than a single story from a single perspective. “In postmodern fiction, thematic and plot devices are designed specifically to question linear history and temporality,” (179) writes literary critic Catherine Burgass; history is more than one timeline of events from one perspective, and should be represented as such. The use of metafiction and plot disruptions in the form of temporal “time-travelling” allows a reader to imagine history as multi-dimensional—as large-scale, global events should be represented—instead of flat and singular-perspective.

Then novel starts out by making the reader question the truth within it: “All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true” (1). It turns out that the “novel” itself has not really begun, and will not begin for the fictional author until page 29 in the second chapter. Vonnegut makes use of metafiction in order to disrupt what the reader knows of the book itself. He puts us in the hands of an unreliable narrator who tells the reader from the beginning that his story is only “pretty much true” and that it all happened “more or less” without telling us what exactly the true parts are. It is significant this line occurs at the beginning of the novel, as explained by Burgass:

…beginnings and endings have a special function in postmodern metafiction, marking the entrance and exit of the fictional world and its parallel time. There is a structural circularity in these novels which confounds linear time…the narrator of Slaughterhouse-Five is particularly taken with those songs whose last line repeats the first line…” (183)

The first claim of Slaughterhouse-Five cycles through the rest of the novel endlessly as the reader questions the reality and the fiction of each scenario as presented by the speaker. From a historical perspective, the history within the novel repeats itself endlessly the reader questioning the author who, in turn, questions the novel he is writing which is a novel that questions the nature of reality itself. In many ways the Vonnegut is feeding us that old line “history repeats itself” but doing so in a way that utilizes literary devices, rather than words, to show us the cliché.

Historical perspective is really not singular, and instead should be considered plural. It is not the memories of one person that make up what is known as “history;” it is the combined memories of many people—indeed thousands of people—to create what we know as a “historical record.” As populations grow and technologies make it possible for more people to witness singular events, representing the “truth” about an event becomes more complicated. With an event as large and globally-impactful as World War II, and the bombing of Dresden, Germany, even history would have a hard time encompassing all the sides in a way that reflects the horror of war. Literature would have a hard time with this as well, since literature does not deal directly with the perspectives of reality and instead turns to fiction to represent reality:

“Did that really happen?” said Maggie White…

“Of course it happened,” Trout told her. “If I wrote something that hadn’t really happened, and I tried to sell it, I could go to jail. That’s fraud.”[…]

[Maggie:] “It’s like advertising. You have to tell the truth in advertising, or you get in trouble.”

[Trout:] “Exactly. The same body of law applies.” (Vonnegut 218)

This conversation between Maggie White and the elusive author Kilgore Trout at Billy Pilgrims eighteenth wedding anniversary party calls into question the original author’s claim of semi-truth. An author is instead compared to an advertiser out to market his own version of the truth and though this conversation seems to single out only one author and one truth that is not necessarily the case. This author, Kilgore Trout, is a fictional character in a novel written by yet another fictional novelist written by Kurt Vonnegut. The separation between the reality of the reader and the fiction of Kilgore Trout lends itself to a symbolic interpretation: Trout is all authors represented in a novel that explores reality as fiction. Indeed, Vonnegut’s claim is here rendered futile in the fact he wrote this book itself; the reader is forced to question why an author would write an anti-war novel about a man who learns that war itself is unstoppable, and cannot be prevented, and that same novel says that fictional books are truth. Instead of history, Vonnegut gives us fiction; instead of anti-war he strips us of our free will—or does he?

The reader’s ability to distinguish between the reality and the fiction presented by a metafictional text is something discussed in Burgass’ article, and she argues that metafiction itself, though it intends to disorient or disturb the reader, is rendered powerless by “average” readers:

‘Real’ readers can often quickly neutralize metafictional devices so that their ontological (and chronological categories) remain intact…The fact that readers temporarily suspend disbelief and imaginatively enter the alternative fictional world with its alternative temporality, renders them immune to metafiction. (184)

It might seem counter-intuitive to present a chronological event, such as a bombing in a war during specific period of time, in such a way as to take the emphasis off of the chronology itself by using a technique like metafictional narrative. What the literary device does, however, is force the reader to piece the events together for himself and instead of confusing or disorienting the reader, the reader is instead put in a position to become a witness to history being remade within the fictional text. In being a witness, suddenly the reader is allowed to become part of that same history—the distance between the historical event in reality and the historical event in literature is thus minimized. Instead of being “neutralized,” metafiction allows the reader a neutral stance; to take in the events presented, and incorporate the multiple perspectives presented within the metafictional text, with an invitation to provide the reader’s own (new) perspective.

The use of literary devices that are often seen as isolating to the reader, such a metafiction, are used in Slaughterhouse-Five to the opposite effect. Vonnegut represents history in a single-perspective, yet through the use of metafictional narrative allows it to be interpreted in a multi-perspective and multi-dimensional way. The generation gap that occurs between the time the novel is set, the several authors within the novel, the author Vonnegut, and the reader are collapsed into a new history, giving the reader first-hand experience of a fictional history and allowing for new perspective into history.

Works Cited

Burgass, Catherine. “A Brief Story of Postmodern Plot.” The Yearbook of English Studies, Vol. 30, Time and Narrative (2000): pp. 177-186. Web. 18 May 2010.

Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-Five. The Dial Press: New York, NY. 2005. Print.