Postmodernism and Symbolism - Essay Example

Prof’s Colour as a Connective Motif and Representation of Frailness and Weakness of Life. Color can be one of the most communicative aspects of writing. In our society we have a complex system of language or vernacular associated with languages that is culturally bound – black and darkness being associated with fear or evil, for instance, while white is often associated with goodness or other positive things. This system is not composed of one to one definitions (white equals good, for instance) but are rather composed of a complex system of association based on usage, perception, association and so on.

Kurt Vonnegut, in Slaughterhouse-Five, makes great use of these associations throughout his work. The repeated use of ivory and blue throughout this work serves two important roles: the first is to draw the work together and draw the reader’s attention to the artifice of literature, and the second is symbolic, to represent the delicacy and fragility of life. One of the most important roles of blue and ivory in the text is to draw the work together. Slaughterhouse-Five is, in many important ways, a work of metafiction, and the reader is expected to connect to and recognize the artifice of the literature, starting from the long form of the title, which recognizes the author and the artificial nature of his fiction.

In this context, blue and ivory serves as a reminder to the reader of the literary devices that the author uses, to draw their literary eye to the metafictional elements of the narrative. The author uses the motif of these two colours throughout the work, referring to a variety of different characters and aspects of their physical appearance. The continued motif draws the work together into a coherent whole, along with emphasizing the metafiction in the work. Beyond this, blue and ivory has significant symbolic meaning in the text.

The color white, and ivory especially, has often been associated with delicacy in our color vernacular, often in reference to skin that has not been out in the sun. Ivory continues to carry this meaning into Slaugherhouse-Five. It is often used to refer to the color bare skin, such as Billy’s “ivory and blue” feet (34). This, in reference to bare skin, emphasizes delicacy. The blue, when taken with the ivory, represents death – as one dies skin blues, and a light blue tint recalls corpses and their skin.

The ivory and blue color palette thus represents the thin line that can separate life from death, a theme that continues throughout the text. Vonnegut emphasizes this difference by using blue and ivory to refer to the living and the dead in quick succession – first referring to Billy’s feet or hands, for instance, before then connecting the colors to the feet of a “dead hobo” (183). Ivory, the delicate color of living skin, and blue, the color of dead skin, combine in this phrase to remind the reader of the fact that life only defends itself from death by the smallest of membranes, which can be punctured at any moment.