Depictions of Time in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five and Jorge Luis Borges’ Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

Abstract

Do the ideas about time in the novel Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut, and the short story Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, by Jorge Luis Borges, conflict, coincide, or both? Are these views presented as positive, negative, or both? This paper aims to show that Vonnegut’s and Borges’ ideas about time in these works coincide, and that they present these ideas negatively. Both texts show how time contributes to or constructs one’s understanding of reality, including one’s emotional responses to that reality. Billy Pilgrim and the Tralfamadorians in Slaughterhouse-Five, and the characters promoting Tlön in Borges’ story, are all trying to utilize their views on time to create a positive emotional affect in themselves and others, but for different reasons.