Ermelinda Izihirwe Ms. Studniski English 10 15 May 2015 Moral Literary Criticism: Slaughterhouse-Five We, as humans, spend a considerable portion of our lives worrying about our future—which is basically every next day, moments in which we wish we could have done something differently, and the loss of our loved ones. In Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut recounts the adventures of Billy Pilgrim in a chronologically unorganized manner to mirror all the movement happening in the character’s mind. By utilizing this kind of kind of structure, the author enhances the connection between the reader and the main character because he, virtually, makes the reader feel what Billy feels. Billy jumps from the calamitous (152) WWII, to adulthood, to childhood, …show more content…
Death is one step to life, and no one can avoid it. Every minute, a few people take in their last breaths, and unfortunately, during the war, the rate much higher than that. Consequently, he gradually builds up around him a wall of disregard towards death because of what the Tralfamadorians taught him. These aliens believe that when a person dies, they are only dead in that moment but healthy in others. This statement creates a sense of contentment because it implies that no one ever really dies! In the book, the phrase “So it goes” (2) gets repeated numerously after any kind of death occurs. The absurd amount of times this phrase gets repeated captures the number of people who died during the WWII, and this contributes to make the book more realistic and believable. In addition to this, Billy Pilgrim uses the phrase to convince himself that every person fate is death, and that they are still very alive in every other moment of their life. Another significant occasion when he feels indifferent about death is at his own death. The reader is aware of his indifference because Billy “laughs about it, and invites the crowd to laugh with him”(142). He has no worries whatsoever because he knows that he can travel any part of the rest of his Deaths are more than often very painful moments to go through, and accepting that death is unavoidable helps to cope with the pain, like a defense mechanism. Billy Pilgrim went down this path, and he never, not even once, felt sorrowful about a