Looking Back at Wasteland(s): A Historiographic Metafictional Reading of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five

Year 2024, Volume: 7 Issue: 3, 467 - 478, 30.09.2024

Sultan Komut Bakınç

https://doi.org/10.37999/udekad.1496333

Abstract

Some moments can never become memories; on the contrary, every breath taken, every word uttered, and every gesture performed are reminiscent of them. Much as the past is said to be past, it never dies. Memories of war belong to this group of the past never past, as in Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five (1969). The novel centres on a traumatized survivor of the Dresden bombing of World War II with an untraditional, fragmented, surreal, and impressive narrative style and generic hybridity of science fiction and historiographic metafiction. Slaughterhouse-Five is an example of historiographic metafiction in that it presents the bombing as a historical fact combined with fictional characters and the author's self-references, experiences, and interpretation of the event. The novel is also a significant work with regard to trauma studies inasmuch as it portrays the effects of wars on human psychology, the traumatized protagonist of the novel, along with other characters, including the author himself. Vonnegut employs metafictional elements to display that people experiencing war trauma create figurative wastelands, their minds become confused and disorganized, and the line between reality and fiction blurs, and thereby, he challenges the conventional boundaries between fiction and history. In that regard, what follows is an attempt to demonstrate how wars turn landscapes and human beings into wastelands both literally and figuratively through not only the author’s but also the protagonist Billy Pilgrim’s experiences and, finally, how postmodernism could be a tool to demonstrate those traumas.

Keywords

Dresden Bombing, Trauma, Historiographic Metafiction, Wasteland

Geçmişin Çorak Topraklarına Bakış: Kurt Vonnegut'un Mezbaha No:5 Romanına Tarihyazımsal Üstkurmaca Bir Yaklaşım

Abstract

Bazı anlar asla anı olmazlar; aksine alınan her nefes, söylenen her söz, yapılan her hareket o anları anımsatır. Her ne kadar geçmişin geçmiş olduğu söylense de etkisi asla sona ermez. Kurt Vonnegut'un Mezbaha Beş (1969) adlı romanı gibi savaş anıları da bu “asla geçmeyen” geçmiş grubuna aittir. İkinci Dünya Savaşı'nda Dresden'in bombalanmasından sağ kurtulan travmatize olmuş bir kişiyi merkeze alan roman, alışılmadık, parçalı, gerçeküstü ve etkileyici bir anlatım tarzına ve bilimkurgu ile tarihyazımsal üstkurmacanın oluşturduğu melez bir yapıya sahiptir. Mezbaha-Beş, Dresden Bombardmanı’nı tarihsel bir olgu olarak kurgusal karakterlerle ve yazarın özimlemeleri, deneyimleri ve olaya ilişkin yorumlarıyla birlikte sunması bakımından tarihyazımsal bir üstkurmaca örneğidir. Roman, savaşların insan psikolojisi üzerindeki etkilerini romanın travmatize olmuş kahramanı ve yazarın kendisi de dahil olmak üzere diğer karakterlerle birlikte anlatması bakımından travma çalışmaları açısından da önemli bir eserdir. Vonnegut, savaş travması yaşayan bireylerin figüratif çorak zihinlerinin karıştığını ve düzensizleştiğini, gerçeklik ve kurgu arasındaki çizgilerin bulanıklaştığını göstermek için üstkurmaca unsurlarını kullanır ve böylece kurgu ve tarih arasındaki geleneksel sınırlara meydan okur. Bu bağlamda, bu çalışma savaşların mekânları ve insanları hem gerçek hem de mecazi anlamda nasıl çorak topraklara dönüştürdüğünü hem yazarın hem de romanın kahramanı Billy Pilgrim'in deneyimleri üzerinden gösterme çabası olarak görülmelidir.

Keywords

Dresden Bombardmanı, Travma, Tarihyazımsal Üstkurmaca, Çorak Toprak

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