| This study employs the principles of Chaos theory in its examination of the thirteen novels of Kurt Vonnegut. Beginning with the work of chaoticians in the sciences, this reading examines order and disorder within Vonnegut's novels-how order self-organizes from disorder, and how disorder springs from order--seeking to explain seeming paradoxes in the canon; how, for example, determinacy and indeterminacy can be said to manifest themselves in the same system, as is the case with Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse Five, and how a body of work that focuses on death camps, unjust prosecutions, slavery, war, avarice, futility, and failure, can be read as an affirmation of the human potential to become more humane.;Key to this study is the role of law in the margins, or boundary regions, between seemingly stable narratives. Law is artifact, and is constructed to control unruly behaviors from marginalized groups. Law represents an attempt to impose order on disorder, and to mark other as illicit; law is part of the rigid machinery of master narratives, centralized discourses, and ruling classes. Vonnegut offers human civility as an alternative to legal mandate, as a means for regulating human behavior that does not rely on power hierarchies.;This work argues Vonnegut's humanism, claiming that Vonnegut's work not only advocates the humane treatment of human beings, but provides examples of how such an accomplishment can be achieved from within a dynamic system from which there is no escape. |
