Grief in Slaughterhouse Five

598 Words3 Pages
Grief in Slaughterhouse Five When death occurs around or within us how do we cope with the fact the person no longer exists? Does death erode because we choose to or are we still bewildered by what the heck happened? In Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut, implies a symbol of the simple phase as it continues threw out the book “So It Goes”. What really is he trying to send a message to the readers? How do we human beings use phrases such as Vonnegut or other methods to symbolize the same as Vonnegut. The beginning of a string of beliefs held by the Tralfamadorians is introduced soon after Billy's talk show appearance. Because of their ability to see the past and the future, they have a different perspective on death. "When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse," Pilgrim explains "all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition at the particular moment." This is because the Tralfamadorians believe that beings live within memories, and "are just fine in plenty of other moments." As readers, we are now introduced to Vonnegut's much used phrase, "so it goes," which appears to be stemmed from the Tralfamadorian beliefs. The phrase “So it goes” follows every mention of death in the novel, equalizing all of them, whether they are natural, accidental, or intentional, and whether they occur on a massive scale or on a very personal one. The phrase reflects a kind of comfort in the Tralfamadorian idea that although a person may be dead in a particular moment, he or she is alive in all the other moments of his or her life, which coexist and can be visited over and over through time travel. At the same time, though, the repetition of the phrase keeps a tally of the cumulative force of death throughout the novel, thus pointing out the tragic inevitability of death. This novel has a complex plot since it recounts the events in Billy Pilgrims entire
Open Document