A motif refers to recurring ideas, thoughts, or images that act as an idea that sometimes turn out to be the central idea of the whole story/book. In the book, Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut frequently uses color motifs to strengthen the true meaning of the novel. The Motifs is to bring back the reader or the audience to the unifying idea that the author presents. The recurrence of “blue and ivory” and “orange and black” in Vonnegut's book are a lot more than they are perceived as.
Throughout the whole story, the personification of sacrifice is shown through color motifs such as Blue and Ivory. Billy writes a letter about his new idea of “time” hoping that one day the world will see his new philosophy. The author mentions that he (Billy) is unable to get his furnace working, so “his bare feet [are] blue and Ivory ” (35). Billy’s blue and ivory feet strengthen his foolishness towards nature while emphasizing the irony that Billy wants to change the world. But he cannot get his furnace to work to warm his frozen feet. Kurt Vonnegut shows how during the war “real life” was taken away.
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Vonnegut again describes Billy’s feet as blue and ivory reminding the reader that war brings out two characteristics in one person. One that is alive (ivory) and one that is dead (blue). He writes, "Someone had taken his boots. His bare feet were blue and ivory. It was all right, somehow, his being dead. So it goes" (Vonnegut 148). Vonnegut uses “so it goes” many times throughout his that some readers question the real meaning of death and the human cost of death, which the whole novel circles around, though it is portrayed as an anti-war