Elliot Gengler History as Fiction

In Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut uses the bombing of Dresden as a kind of Setting for the novel. The events of this bombing influence everything in Billy's Story, and he is repeatedly reminded of his trauma, only to forget about it again, as he travels to a different part of his life. In the climax of the novel, Billy finally remembers his experience at Dresden, and so his coming to terms with the bombing is a clear conclusion to Billy's emotional development. This Bombing of Dresden, due to both Billy and Vonnegut's strange experiences during it, is a key setting for the novel, and I want to look at why Vonnegut chose it as a setting. The Bombing of Dresden, at the time of Vonnegut's writing, was one of the lesser known occurrences of the second world war, and so its nature, as an example of an allied atrocity, that no one knew about and that may have even been covered up made it a very interesting subject to cover. The concept of Americans committing such a mas...

In Mumbo Jumbo , as in many detective novels, the climactic scene appears as an exposition, where the reader is shown exactly who the murderer is, and the detective explains why and how the murderer committed their crime. In Reed's deconstruction of the detective novel, the reader already knows that Hinckle Von Vampton is guilty, but the "unmasking scene" is still used to explain his motive. The story jumps all the way back to Ancient Egypt, where it describes the King of Egypt, Osiris, and his jealous brother, Set. Osiris is a Prince, and instead of caring about "princely" things, he focuses more on his education. There, Osiris learns agriculture, and with agriculture comes dance. Osiris becomes a master of both these dances and of agriculture, and so when he becomes King, he teaches this "civilization" to the people of Egypt. They love it, but Set is enraged by the dancing and farming. He wants the people of Egypt to be cannibals, and to go back to...

The Mention of Franz von Papen's military attache, while Tateh and the family are in New Jersey, seemed very strange to me. He shows up for just about a page, and is not seen again, but he is much more mixed up in both the history of the time and the narrative of the family than you might expect. This strange "cameo" somewhat reminds me of Freud's trip through New York. A seemingly random historical figure wanders through our narrative, taking a brief look around, and leaving, without any significant effect on the plot. Both serve to remind us of the historical setting of the novel as well as providing an ironic twist, due to our hindsight. In Freud's case, we are reminded that Freud was writing his works at the same time that this novel is taking place. Then we see him return to Vienna, saying that all of America is a mistake, and complaining about the way they appropriate and ruin European culture, hinting at the figure of JP Morgan, who will only appear later i...

Throughout his works, E. L. Doctorow seems to avoid using quotation marks at all costs. It doesn't take long to notice this in Ragtime, and once you do, you quickly notice how superfluous they are to his writing. His ability to avoid quotation marks is itself interesting, but I also want to talk about the implications of this punctuation choice on the postmodernist setting of Ragtime. A big part of postmodernism is pushing the boundary between history and fiction. The lack of quotation marks serves as a clear blurring of this line. It makes it just a bit harder to tell what is history and where Doctorow has created his own stories. It also helps Doctorow to create "pockets of history" where he can say that some occurrence reasonably could have happened. The lack of quotation marks gives a sense that these characters didn't necessarily say exactly what is in the book, and by extension that what happens in the book is not necessarily accurate, but instead a modern day r...