A Study On Metaphor In Slaughtehouse-Five

As one of the most influential cognitive models, Text World Theory (Werth,1999) mainly concerns the cognitive mechanism of the discourse. It pays much attention to readers’background knowledge as well as the function of the context in their reading process. In the study of literary discourse, Text World Theory is effective in interpreting readers’mental representations of the fictional world in their reading process and how literary meanings are generated in their mind as well.Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) is regarded as one of the representatives of black humor fictions, whose masterpiece, Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), becomes one of the best sellers at the moment of its publication. One of the most foregrounded stylistic features of Slaughterhouse-Five is its non-linear narrative. The novel is fragmented with the protagonist Billy Pilgrim’s chaotic time travel mainly around wartime experience, postwar life, prewar life and fantasy life on an imaginary planet called Tralfamadore. Therefore, when reading the text, readers have to connect all these fragments by means of activating their background knowledge. Besides, the novel is full of abnormal metaphors, the understanding of which also requires readers to take all the fragments of Billy Pilgrim’s life into consideration simultaneously. Only in this cognitive way of interpreting these metaphors, can readers better understand the various thematic meanings of the novel and construct a coherent discourse. However, so far, no research has been made on the relations between metaphor in Slaughterhouse-Five and the various themes of the novel from cognitive perspective.Based on this observation, the paper carries out a study on metaphor in Slaughterhouse-Five within the framework of Text World Theory with the purpose to account for how the thematic meanings of the novel are represented in readers’mind during their reading process. The study includes three parts. The first part is an exploration of the anti-war theme of the novel in terms of two metaphors, namely, the Children’s Crusade metaphor and spoon metaphor. The second part is an analysis of the war-trauma theme of the novel with three metaphors, namely, the barbershop quartet metaphor, the mustard gas and roses metaphor, as well as the blue and ivory feet metaphor. The last part is a demonstration of the absurdity theme of the novel in terms of the mega-metaphor of Billy Pilgrim and the Jesus Christ metaphor. It is worth mentioning that Billy, a survivor of the war, has been mentally damaged in the war and got trauma mind, which also demonstrates the war-trauma theme of the war. In Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut depicts a funny and "joke" image of Billy in the form of black humor, indicating that soldiers in Second World War are weak and vulnerable, just like Billy, from which it is safe to say that war is also absurd.The study shows that metaphor provides two visions (more visions in a mega-metaphor) for readers to understand the text. One is the prominent text world and the other is the metaphor world constructed in postwar time. When blending the two text worlds together, readers can get the idea that war is deceptive, cruel and destructive. It is concluded that research on metaphor in Slaughterhouse-Five from Text World Theory approach has a great power in interpreting the various thematic meanings of the novel, which, consequently, will be helpful for readers to better understand the novel in one way, and provide an effective model for research on literary works, especially postmodernism absurd fictions, in another.