Santi Ramdhani 1209503155 Postmodernism: A New Style of Narrative In the last quarter of the 20th century, postmodernism began

to appear. A definition of postmodernism is given by Knox and Marston: Postmodernism is a view of the world that emphasizes openness to a range of perspectives in social inquiry, artistic expression, and political empowerment (Vries, 2005: 6). Generally, postmodernism is a concept after modernism period. Modernism had been left in postmodernism era. Modernism that always structured in everything, but postmodernism called as poststructuralism. Under the label of poststructuralism, some writers have argued that since the human mind understood everything through the medium of language, everything could be regarded, in some sense, as a text. Actually, we knew that postmodern is the way to narrate story or something else. A style of narrative is a product of humans thought. More than it, postmodernism is a concept in which people did not satisfy to the reality. Postmodernists are usually the people who always questioning anything. Questioning anything is a reflection of unsatisfied of the reality. They did not believe to the truth. According to postmodernist, everything is nothing. There are almost no values in the way of narration. It is because generally postmodernism attacks the truth and value. Because of the triumph of Capitalism

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and the emphasis on efficiency, management is more important than truth; because of the influence of computerization, performance is more important than value (Errol, www.reformation-today.org). It means that truth and value have no sense of truth and values. So, do not talk about values in the postmodernism novel. Over all, what I said above is representation of human thinking and when it pours to the literary works like fiction; it will be a way of narrative. Furthermore, postmodern is a new way of narrative. As I said above that postmodern is a concept that oppose to modern. The way of narrative of postmodernism is a new liking for fragmented forms, discontinuous narrative, and random-seeming collages of disparate materials. It means that in this way, form that used by postmodern is fragmented may be in the kind of story, and narrated by discontinuous or random. May be we can said that seems like no plot there. In addition, in the other world, performance to be more prepared than truth. Moreover, management becomes a main thing in story than value.
Postmodernism as a term first arose in architectural circles in the 1970s, but only came into popular usage after the publication of Jean Francois Lytards The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge in English in 1984 (French edition, 1979). He writes, Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity towards metanarratives. He is referring particularly to the metanarrative offered by science, which has become so specialized and fragmented that it cannot possibly speak with a united voice (Erroll Hulse, blog).

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From the quotation above, we can see that according to Jean Francois Lytard in The Postmodern Condition, which is quoted by Errol Hulse in his blog that postmodernism do not trust or doubt to the way of metanarrative. Metanarrative is a term of metanarrative is a story about stories, covers and explains the other "little story" in the conceptual model that makes the story into one. Metanarrative actually seems like common narrative that should tell everything chronological with the concept Aristotle expressed that literary work must have a consistency in the beginning, middle, and end. Nevertheless, for the postmodernism those terms are not work. Postmodern is incredulity to the metanarrative. Therefore, if we imagine that the work of postmodern always did not follow the narrative rules as explained above. As reflected in Kurt Vonneguts Timequake, this story really reflects the elements of postmodernism in the cases of narrative. This work can be classified as the postmodernist work. It is proved by the irregularity of the plot. Actually, this story told about the life of Kurt Vonnegut itself, so, this work claimed as semiautobiographical. There is one thing from that novel that make us interested is a jumping story to the past decade. There are no chronological events in this novel, we know that every chapter contents of same story but told by different people and different style but the main event is same. And this story consist of Timequake one and Timequake two. It happens because of dissatisfaction from the

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author about Timequake One. In addition, Vonnegut make it seems like dj vu. Actually, this story tells about a rupture in the fabric of time that forces the world to relieve the previous decade. In postmodern narrative, there is a vagueness of the narrator. As I said before that, this work is like semi autobiography of Kurt Vonnegut. Therefore, Vonnegut positions himself as a narrator also as a character. For example, there is a character named Kilgore Trout in this story but actually, Kilgore Trout is Vonnegut. He makes the others narration with different character named Kilgore Trout although that is Vonnegut itself. Therefore, we can conclude that Vonneguts story represents his autobiography and the character Kilgore Trout is a way of fiction. If we make it in a series, we will not find the main story of this novel. Vonnegut told many things in this novel, randomly. Vonnegut described the novel as a "stew", in the which he alternates the between summarizing a novel he had been struggling with for a number of years, and waxing nostalgic about various events in his life. As explained before about how the way of postmodernism narrative, which rejected the usage of metanarrative of the story. Then, postmodernism tend to use the model o mininarrative that is just focus to practices, local events; not attend to make the unity of something, but more fragmented to the pieces of story.

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Postmodernism, in rejecting grand narratives, favors mini-narratives, stories that explain small practices, local events, rather than large-scale universal or global concepts. Postmodern mini-narratives are always situational, provisional, contingent, and temporary, making no claim to universality, truth, reason, or stability (Klages, 2001, Postmodernism)

In addition, we can analyze it from the whole of his manner to tell the story. There are so many pieces of story that sharing about many things, even telling about Satan. "All Satan wanted to do was help, and she did in many cases," he concluded. "And her record for promoting nostrums with occasionally dreadful side effects is no worse than that of the most reputable pharmaceutical houses of the present day (Vonnegut, 1998: chapter 7)." Vonnegut seems like parodied woman as he said Satan. It really showed that the characteristic of postmodernism is parodied anything as the reflection of view to anything in the world. Once again, talking about a style of postmodernism narrative, we recognize a term of lose of structure that means as a multiple style in writing. It seems like the freedom of writing without consider the rules. As the sample of Timequake, our eyes can see that the frame of thinking of postmodernist, here means Vonnegut, is really hurried. We know from the plot, which is seems like want to go to the point directly without any explanation before. Indeed, that is the character of postmodernism. In addition, freedom of conventional form here means writing, really depicted in this story.

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Something that make the readers bored is from chapter 1 until 5, the story always same. The meaning of each story becomes loose. Between one to another there are no connection, as usual in common style of narrative. But here, there are seems like no plot as I said before. That is a representative of postmodernist people who consider that life is nothing, so they describe it by the way of narration. They (postmodernist) do not care about the plot in the story. They just tell the story as the way they want. It is proved enough from Timequake. That is a real product of postmodernist people. Once again, Vonnegut always questioning anything in that novel. Questioning itself is a key of postmodernism. It is because postmodernist doubt with their world and doubt with reality. There is one of the examples of all the questions there. Pepper asked this rhetorical question: "Why is it so important that we all be humiliated, with such ingenuity and at such great expense? (Vonnegut, 1998: chapter 16) Rhetorical question is one of the reflections of non-sense. And that is more emphasize that everything is nothing is the perspective of postmodernism. As a whole explanation, we know that there is differentiation between modern narratives with postmodern narrative. It is a new style in writing as a reflection of the way of thinking postmodernist at all.

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Reference:
Klages, M. (2001), Postmodernism.Website: http://www.colorado.edu/English/ENGL2012Klages/pomo.html

Vriest, de Wouter & Friends. 2005. Postmodernism and Globalization. Essay.

Vonnegut, Kurt. 1998. Timequake. Great Britain: Vintage

www.reformation-today.org/Erroll Hulse

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