Human Alienation In Capitalist Society

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (1922-2007) is one of the most important postmodernist novelists in contemporary literary history of America. Together with Joseph Heller, their works were considered as the representatives of black humor. The Slaughterhouse-Five is his first successful novel which let him gain the worldwide fame and is surely his best achievement. Vonnegut is a successful prophet of the crisis of people's mental state and material situation in modern society. The phenomenon of alienation in his works deserves people's attention and research.Vonnegut described a society and the human beings who live in it and suffer from alienation whenever and wherever in their lives.For Western Marxists, human beings are manipulated by the social system unconsciously, and dominated by the capitalist society, their life is arranged according to the requirement of social system, but nobody realize it. In Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut tore the mystic veil of capitalist society off and revealed its truth.Chapter One gives a brief introduction of the novelist, his works and his reputation. Then there is literature review which means to summarize the most influential discussion on Kurt Vonnegut, and Slaughterhouse-Five all over the world. and also in this chapter, the author declares the objective of writing this paper.Chapter Two explains the concept of alienation of Western Marxism, and gives a short introduction of many outstanding western Marxists.Chapter Three analyzes the total alienation from perspective of reality. At first, the paper gives a basic discussion of the general alienation from society, points out that alienation in contemporary capitalist society has developed as"total alienation", it can be found not only in the laboring field, but also in all aspects of social life. The victims of alienation contain the proletarians, moreover capitalists, bureaucrats, managers, staff and even the general citizens. Then the paper is going to discuss alienation in the whole society in details: alienation of people's free will, alienation among people's relationship and alienation or disorder of human's mental states. Then the paper will analyze the alienation during the war through tree aspects: alienated patriotism during the war and alienation of the purpose of the war.Chapter Four analyzes people's alienated life in other aspects. First is the discussion of alienation of time, then it is the research of alienated ordinary things. According to these steps, the paper goes further to ensure the total alienation of the capitalist society.Chapter Five aims to demonstrate the special literature devices Vonnegut used in the novel to strengthen the effect of alienation and they are a kind of alienation themselves.After the discussion of alienation in the society, such as alienation of people's free will, people's relationship, and the alienation of human mental states, the final chapter gives a conclusion that alienation has been transformed into a new level by the capitalist system. It has many new characteristics, reaches every aspects of human life.