Slaughterhouse Five Acceptance Of Life Essay

Death: Acceptance of Life

Indisputably, war has always played a big role in history, but the problems and the rational motives of war — glory, honor, duty, courage — are disputable. Does anything beneficial ever come from war? In many respects, Kurt Vonnegut was inspired to write the Slaughterhouse-Five by the issue of war and its motives. Slaughterhouse-Five is about the life of Billy Pilgrim and is primarily the subject that shows an account of World War II and the post-war trauma that many soldiers had to deal with. Since the book is about war, many characters throughout the book die. Whenever somebody dies or something bad happens in Slaughterhouse-Five? The refrain “So it goes” is used. This refrain appears so frequently that it almost

Vonnegut used satire to emphasize how much people want to avoid dying, while simultaneously acknowledging how painful and endless life can be: “If what Billy Pilgrim learned from the Tralfamadorians is true, that we will all live forever, no matter how dead we may sometimes seem to be, I am not overjoyed. Still--if I am going to spend eternity visiting this moment and that, I'm grateful that so many of those moments are nice” (269). Instead of being overjoyed at Billy’s notion of death is eternal, Vonnegut expresses appreciation for “those moments are nice” (269) that will be revisited forever. This acts as a sarcastic view of expectations of the joys of eternity, which also serves as a criticism of the fact that eternal life may not always be pleasant when it involves repeating unpleasant events. But more notably, “So it goes” was a key element of satire in Slaughterhouse-Five as it was repeated —one hundred six times— to emphasize the irony of death and hopelessness of war. This phrase was considered a tool to mark death, which was a satire of people’s tendency of ignoring the tragedy and destruction of war. For instance, the narrator explains that “a slave laborer from Poland” (116) who produced Billy's perforated dog tags after he arrives at the Prisoner of War camp is "dead now." The required refrain “So it goes” is then added by the narrator to emphasize death's absurdity and futility while also drawing attention to it. This phrase also mocked the notion of people who just considered death and destruction of war as a given, which also conveyed the idea that death and tragedy is an inevitable aspects of life. Even if “So it goes” conveys the sense that Billy Pilgrim doesn’t actually care about life and disaster, the sentences should be viewed as having a bewailing tone if they are to be read as