UDK 81’42:821.111(73)–311.6.09Vonnegut K. MODAL STRUCTURE IN KURT VONNEgUT’S SlaUgHTERHOUSE-FivE

The article analyses modal structure (tense, polarity) in Kurt Vonnegut’s novel SlaughterhouseFive within the framework of Systemic-Functional Grammar. The analysis of the Mood element shows the prevailing pattern to be past positive; the use of present tenses embodies Vonnegut’s specific non-linear concept of time. Similarly, the absence of negative polarity builds the deterministic belief that pervades the novel.


INTRODUCTION
Even if good literature opens up the space for personal interpretation and there are, in a way, as many readings of a piece of writing as there are readers, most literary works will leave the reader with some typical impressions.One can be quite certain that the hero is more or less heroic, the heroine capricious, vivacious, or caustic -despite the fact that they are never described as such.How do these meanings come about?What exactly is the mechanism that allows actions to speak louder than words?Attempting to contribute a part of the answer to these questions, the paper takes a close look at modal structure (tense and polarity) in Kurt Vonnegut's novel Slaughterhouse-Five within the framework of Systemic-Functional Grammar (Halliday 1998, Halliday andMatthiessen 2004).
KURT VONNEGUT AND SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (1922-2007) was an American author who began with science fiction and then wrote his "famous book about Dresden" (Vonnegut 2000: 3).Published in 1969, Slaughterhouse-Five "was something of a literary 'event'" (Harris 1971: 52).Vonnegut finally managed to write this book after 25 years and 5,000 pages.On this subject he said (in Amis 1990: 137): "I always thought, if I could ever get something down about Dresden, that would be it.After Slaughterhouse-Five I'd already done much more than I ever expected to do with my life."It seems that critics agree, calling it a "masterly novel" (Tanner 1971: 200); Vonnegut himself was described by Graham Greene as "one of the best living American writers" (in Allan 1988: 57).Nevertheless, the success of this book is inextricably tied to the Zeitgeist: the anti-war sentiment present in the United States embraced Vonnegut's novel as "deconstruct[ing] the binary framing of America's 'good war', offering a 'Vietnamized' version, full of discontinuities, fragmented bodies, and multiple shades of gray" (Jarvis 2003: 96).It should be noted, however, that critical acclaim was much more difficult to achieve as the critics at first tried to discard Vonnegut as just another science-fiction writer and the awareness of the seriousness of Vonnegut's inquiries took a long time to grow (cf.Tanner 1971: 181). 1laughterhouse-Five or The Children's Crusade is based on Vonnegut's experience in the Second World War, when he was a prisoner of war in Dresden and saw its destruction -the bombing by the Allies.2Still this is not an autobiographic work, the hero is Billy Pilgrim.Billy is unstuck in time and moves spasmodically from event to event through his life in random sequence.The central line of the novel is his war experience, which culminates in the bombing of Dresden and is interrupted by other events in his life, be it his childhood, peaceful life as an optometrist, or his abduction on the planet Tralfamadore.
Possibly the main characteristic of the novel, which also bothered the critics tremendously, is its seeming simplicity.It appears that the author wanted to get the message across so badly that he had to spell it out, and did that more than once.Two prominent topics are fatalism and the structure of time.Billy's prayer is for God to grant him the serenity to accept the things he cannot change, courage to change the things he can, and wisdom always to tell the difference -accompanied by Vonnegut's (2000: 44) commentary: "Among the things Billy Pilgrim could not change were the past, the present, and the future."This does not leave much space for free will and for action, as Vonnegut (2000: 119) points out again: "There are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces."This is connected to the powerful idea of the structure of time -we are all "bugs in amber" (Vonnegut 2000: 62), any moment is structured, has always been and always will be (cf.Vonnegut 2000: 84).
There is dissension among the critics, however.Is this really fatalism or is it antifatalism?Vonnegut scholars split into two opposite camps, many of them speaking against the above understanding of the book (cf.Cacicedo 2005, Broer 1994, Tanner 1971).To this issue is linked the question of the alleged anti-war sentiment of the novel, which juxtaposes pacifistic statements with the belief there will always be wars.In the case of Vonnegut, there has been significant interpretative interference by the author, who enjoyed discussing his work.His statements vary considerably and could probably substantiate very different theories; at some point he even disclaimed everything he had ever said (Allan 1988: 77).
GRAMMATICAL COMPLEXITY AND THEMATIC STRUCTURE Kavalir (2006) is an analysis of the grammatical complexity and thematic structure of the novel using the framework of Systemic-Functional Grammar.The examination of the grammatical (non-)complexity of the novel exposes the great simplicity of style as evident in the low number of long clause complexes.When compared to an excerpt from Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist, Vonnegut's complexes do not deviate noticeably in the hierarchical relationships within the complex, but mainly in their length.Vonnegut's language is thus in no way impoverished, embodying instead the Tralfamadorian concept of literature, where sentences, paragraphs and subchapters imitate separate clusters of symbols to produce a mosaic effect.The decision to renounce logical relations between clauses is especially manifest in the war scenes and entails the abandonment of logic appropriate to the unspeakableness of the book's main event.
The study of the novel's thematic structure shows its main character Billy Pilgrim to be rather insignificant, readily yielding his place as the Theme to others.A victim of outer forces, he does not develop but serves more to keep the novel together.The choice of the Theme when recounting the bombing of Dresden unmasks the book's fatalism: people are not very important and in any case cannot change anything because everything that happens must happen; this idea of determinism leaves room only for resignation.Apart from the very few circumstances that act as the Theme and the conventional inversion in reporting clauses, the only noteworthy example of a marked Theme is in So it goes (and And so on), yet through frequent use this catch-phrase loses its markedness and becomes a mannerism.

MODAL STRUCTURE IN CHAPTER 8
While Kavalir (2006) provides some noteworthy insights into the novel and the way some of its most noticeable traits are constructed, many meanings quite obvious to the reader remain unexplainable.The hypothesis explored here is that at least some of them can be attributed to grammatical levels other than complexity and thematic structure.With this aim in mind, an attempt at a functional grammar analysis is carried out on Chapter 8 of the novel, which comprises 4,533 words.The choice of this particular chapter hinges on the fact that it includes the most important event in the novel, the bombing of Dresden.
According to Halliday (1998) and Halliday and Matthiessen (2004), a clause is made up of three distinct structures combined into one: transitivity structure (ideational component: clause as representation), modal structure (interpersonal component: clause as exchange), and thematic structure (textual component: clause as message).Modal structure refers to the clause organized as "an interactive event involving speaker, or writer, and audience" (Halliday 1998: 68).The Mood element mainly consists of two parts, the Subject and the Finite operator.The Residue consists of three kinds of functional elements, Predicator, Complement and Adjunct.Finiteness combines the specification of polarity with the specification of temporal or modal reference to the speech event and the Subject specifies the entity in respect of which the assertion is claimed to have validity; the Mood element therefore "carries the burden of the clause as an interactive event" (Halliday 1998: 77).
Table 1 shows the distribution of finite verbal operators in Chapter 8 of Slaughterhouse-Five across the two types, temporal and modal operators (embedded clauses are excluded).Absolute numbers are shown for both ways in which operators relate propositions to their context, via primary tense (Past; Present; Future) and modality, which can be Low -e.g.snakes couldn't help being snakes (Vonnegut 2000: 119); Median -e.g.I should know (Vonnegut 2000: 124); or High -e.g.I have to ask (Vonnegut 2000: 124).The operators are also analysed in terms of positive and negative polarity.When it comes to the structure of Mood and Residue, the prevailing tense-cumpolarity pattern here is past positive.If only the Finite element (and the Mood Adjunct not where appropriate) is taken as the criterion, 396 clauses feature a past positive pattern, representing 76% of all clauses with a Finite (522).There are 76 clauses where the Finite element is realized by a present temporal operator, and 54 of these occur in speech, as part of dialogue (cf.Table 2).

So it goes 10
Comments 3 Other 9 Total 76

Table 2 Present operators in context
Of the remaining 22 examples of present tenses, 10 are instances of the catchphrase So it goes.2 such choices constitute a general comment about war and the novel, and there is also a narrative remark (Here is what they sang); these three can be seen as interventions by the author.This leaves 9 examples of present tenses, which do not seem warranted in their environment.Given the past context in which it occurs, this passage (Vonnegut 2000: 120-121) deserves to be reproduced here together with the analysis in Figure 1: 'Father,' she said, 'what are we going to do with you?'And so on.'You know who I could just kill?' she asked.'Who could you kill?' said Billy.'That Kilgore Trout.' Kilgore Trout was and is a science-fiction writer, of course.Billy has not only read dozens of books by Trout -he has also become Trout's friend, to the extent that anyone can become a friend of Trout, who is a bitter man.*** Trout lives in a rented basement in Ilium, about two miles from Billy's nice white home.He himself has no idea how many novels he has written -possibly seventy-five of the things.Not one of them has made money.So Trout keeps body and soul together as a circulation man for the Ilium Gazette, manages newspaper delivery boys, bullies and flatters and cheats little kids.

Figure 1 Analysis of extract from Chapter 8
The story then continues with Billy met him for the first time in 1964 and goes on with the narrative strictly in the past time sphere.What is the function of this surprising insertion?A possible answer would be that it serves to reinforce by means of tense and thus Mood selection the specific idea of time presented in this book.If we take a look at the first occurrences of present tenses in this chapter, the Present Indefinite and the Present Perfect Indefinite in Kilgore Trout was and is a science-fiction writer, of course.Billy has not only read dozens of books by Trout -he has also become Trout's friend, they appear out of place because the point of reference is seemingly the moment when Billy talks to his daughter -and Billy had read dozens of books by Trout already before that moment, and had become Trout's friend.The contrast is heightened by the fact that on the very same page the usual sequence of tenses is observed later on (Vonnegut 2000: 121): And then the newspaper girl held up her hand.'Mr Trout-' she said, 'if I win, can I take my sister, too?' 'Hell no,' said Kilgore Trout.'You think money grows on trees?' Trout, incidentally, had written a book about a money tree.
It is in instances like this that we can capture at least a part of that mysterious elusiveness of style that is "literariness": "the […] ways Vonnegut gets our wires crossed and holds incongruous discourses together are his own and make for that aesthetic surplus value" (Rigney 2009: 13).In this passage, the point of reference temporarily moves to "a sort of eternal present" (Tanner 1971: 197).For Billy "[a]ll moments, past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist" (Vonnegut 2000: 19) because he is "spastic in time" and "has no control over where he is going next" (Vonnegut 2000: 17).Billy discovers it is only an illusion that one moment follows another one, and that once a moment is gone, it is gone forever (cf.Harris 1971: 70). 3 , 4 "Everything always is" (Tanner 1971: 197) and this authorizes Vonnegut to use a tense such as the Present Perfect wherever he may feel like using it -or whenever he may feel the need to remind the reader of his concept of time.A prime example is the introductory scene with Billy Pilgrim when he states (Vonnegut 2000: 17): "Billy has gone to sleep a senile widower and awakened on his wedding day.He has walked through a door in 1955 and come out another one in 1941.He has gone back through that door to find himself in 1963."And also: "I, Billy Pilgrim, the tape begins, will die, have died, and always will die on February thirteenth, 1976" (Vonnegut 2000: 103).
Vonnegut's frequent use of now presents a problem for the analysis.This particular item can either be used as an adverb pointing to a Location in time (Adjunct in the modal structure), or as a Conjunctive Adjunct with a textual function, locating "the clause in time with respect to the preceding textual environment" (Halliday 1998: 84).Although the two functions seem far apart, this novel shows they can actually sometimes be conflated.When Vonnegut uses now at the beginning of a new subchapter in a sentence like Now the party was in progress (Vonnegut 2000: 124), there are two possible interpretations: to understand it as a continuation of the preceding events, or as grounding this particular happening independently of what precedes and follows it, whereby every event is a special time loop5 .The latter interpretation is in line with the idea of non-linearity of time.
In Systemic Functional Linguistics, what is selected is just as important as what is not selected.Only 19 clauses in Chapter 8 feature negative polarity.This represents less than 4% of all clauses with a Finite, and establishes positive polarity as the absolute norm.An even greater uniformity can be seen in the 119 clauses which deal with the bombing of Dresden and its immediate consequences: only one of these clauses features negative polarity.This is again a striking embodiment of the novel's message: "Man cannot alter his destiny of his own volition; everything that happens must happen, and man is powerless to change it" (Holland 1995: 54).What follows from this impossibility of denial is that the proper response to life is one of resigned acceptance; according to Harris (1971: 69), this is the main idea emerging from Slaughterhouse-Five.This sincere deterministic belief has inevitable consequences for the way in which war is seen: it is beyond control, but that is all right: "[The destruction of Dresden] was all right […] Everything is all right, and everybody has to do exactly what he does" (Vonnegut 2000: 144-145).
The topic of resignation to fate is again linked to Billy's perception of time: fatalistically, Billy becomes "completely quiescent, calmly accepting everything that happens as happening exactly as it ought to" (Tanner 1971: 198), since "[n]othing can be done to change it because each moment is structured in its own particular way -it always has been and always will be" (Holland 1995: 42).Furthermore, this strong fatalist impression does not speak for Slaughterhouse-Five's being an anti-war novel: "With his new vision, Billy does not protest about the Vietnam war, nor shudder about the effects of the bombing" (Tanner 1971: 198).

CONCLUSION
An analysis of the type attempted here can only reveal a small part of the whole picture, and even at the level of language there are many more elements to Slaughterhouse-Five than have been discussed here."[T]he language of texts cannot be adequately explored by focusing only on one particular feature of organization such as grammar or phonology […] The way language is patterned in such contexts involves attention to the organization of language beyond grammar, that is beyond such relatively small units of language as the sentence and towards larger units of organization" (Carter and Nash 1994: 2).
Nevertheless, the method applied provides some interesting insights into how this particular novel functions, and how it builds up its unique style.Modal structure in Slaughterhouse-Five (Chapter 8) evidences the prominence of past positive Mood.The cases of present tenses point to the exceptional understanding of time in Slaughterhouse-Five: it is an illusion that one moment follows another, and all moments exist simultaneously in the present, past and future.The relative lack of negative operators is linked to the novel's recurrent fatalism; it derives from the fact that people cannot change their destiny.The analysis thus shows how grammar develops some of the topics in Slaughterhouse-Five such as fatalism and the problem of time.It seems that these themes are so clearly expressed through structure that there might be a point to criticism of exaggerated straightforwardness in the form of Vonnegut's authorial metatextual commentaries.
The contribution linguistic analyses of literary works such as the one presented here make is to provide a form of disciplinary knowledge that can be tested, debated and built upon; without linguistics, the study of literature all too often remains a series of personal preferences (Hasan 1985: 104;cf. Lukin and Webster 2005: 419).Any interpretations and conclusions drawn from this can, however, only be partial as it is quite possible to claim that yes, the grammar of the book does suggest fatalism, but the novel as a whole has to be understood as a warning against the perils of fatalism (cf.Broer 1994: 86-87, 95) or as transcending it and thus "re-presenting the gospel message of Christ to the disciples" (Cacicedo 2005: 365).While a focus only on the grammar component of language cannot spell out all the secrets of Vonnegut's style, and even less all the meanings hidden -or at times laid out -in the book, the article shows that even a very limited microscopic view can in fact expose some of the mechanisms by which the novel achieves its effect on the reader.

Table 1 Temporal
and modal operators in Chapter 8