Requirements: 5 full pages minimum; Times New Roman 12 Font only (or Garamond 12)
Respond to one of the following prompts:
1) In Slaughterhouse-Five, why does Vonnegut turn to the “unreal”—science fiction—to depict historical atrocity/the terrors modern society can inflict upon people? Here, you likely will want to analyze such topics as: narrative v. anti- narrative; why the novel is “so short and jumbled and jangled”; why time is spastic; what the form of the novel itself signifies; how the novel/the form of the novel counters typical war narratives.
2) Why does Billy become an apostle for the Tralfamadorian worldview? Here you must analyze the contrast between the Tralfamadorian philosophy of time and experience and the Earthling philosophy of time and experience. Yet, with his novel, how/to what end does Vonnegut contest (critique) the Tralfamadorian philosophy?
3) In The Metamorphosis, why does Kafka turn to the “unreal” (the Fantastic? Surreal? Gothic? Absurdist? Expressionist?)—to depict the terrors modern society can inflict upon people?
4) If you are familiar with existentialism—or would like to become so—consider analyzing The Metamorphosis through an existential lens.
5) If you are familiar with psychoanalysis/psychoanalytic interpretation—or would like to become so—consider analyzing The Metamorphosis through a psychoanalytic lens.
To get the wheels turning!:
What is it about anti-realist art that so profoundly figures alienation/dehumanization /estrangement?
What is it about anti-realist art that so profoundly asserts the irrationality or inhumanity of a world incapable
of empathy or ethical behavior toward others?
What is it about anti-realist art that so disturbingly depicts incomprehensible cruelty, a rejection or a
violence so overwhelming that it threatens the very rationality of existence itself?
To elaborate, consider clinical definitions of trauma (an acute injury, from the Greek word for wound).
Clinical definitions posit overwhelmed psychic defenses and a destabilized nervous system. Traumatic events generally involve threats to life or bodily integrity, or a close personal encounter with violence or death. They confront human beings with the extremities of helplessness and terror, and evoke the responses of catastrophe. The core experience of trauma—physical, but which is also psychological—is that of intense fear, helplessness, loss of control, the threat of annihilation. The traumatic injury is not simply a psychic wound, but includes a loss of faith in the sanity of the world, the humanity of humans (see also Picasso’s Guernica, Spiegelman’s Maus, and countless other 20th century artworks).
So, again: what is it about anti-realist or un-real artistic forms that so powerfully expresses the existential or even ontological crises wrought by modern forms of terror?
