چكيده
“Existentialism" influences the way we think about the world and ourselves. Absurdism", one of the themes of “existentialism” results from the gap between the human expectation for meaning and purpose, and the meaninglessness of the world. This study looks at the Slaughterhouse-five, a postmodern novel written by Kurt Vonnegut. It involves how an individual is transformed through experience of pain and suffering. Vonnegut’s novel of war dramatizes the horrors that was exposed to him in Second World War and the impossibility of escaping from death. By witnessing such a terrible massacre of thousands of innocent people, Billy Pilgrim, the protagonist of the novel, perceives the pointlessness of death and war and consequently this perception leads him to an experience of “absurdity”. In order to get rid of this feeling of meaninglessness Billy gets involved in a “psychotic episode” and loss his contact with reality. Accordingly, he travels through time to find his Utopia.
