Relationship Between Slaughterhouse Five and my Definition of American Literature

     My definition of American literature mainly focused on the importance of the development of the American identity, as well as American goals that we all share as people of the United States, and how that translates into our literature. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut demonstrates the views of America in many ways, one of which involves English soldiers. In one part of the story, the author makes an effort to describe to the reader how the American prisoners are looked down upon in contrast to the rest of the Europeans, and yet how Billy remains almost completely indifferent to that fact. This reflects not only the development of Billy's individual identity, which is seen throughout the story in other ways talking about different times in his life, but also the development of the identity of the other American soldiers, who had a similar reaction to the insults as Billy. This connects with my definition because the development of the author's identity affects his perspective, similarly to how my definition involved the impact of American identity and culture on their writings.
     The author's goal in the story makes an even stronger connection to my definition. In the story, his goal is to communicate to the reader the problem of warfare. With warfare being seen as a common and shared problem of the people of America, this relates to my definition in that my definition involves writing based on shared interests of the American people, or for the betterment of the American people. Also, the very Postmodernist style of the writing connects to how I mentioned the change of the culture and goals of the writing throughout different periods of time (with this writing, along with much of the writing of Postmodernism, being strongly tied to the events of World War II).