A Literary Analysis “Slaughterhouse-Five” is an intriguing and mystifying story about everything from war to time travel. Kurt Vonnegut, the author, uses powerful imagery and repetition to create a beautiful and powerful theme that is seamlessly intertwined into his story line. More importantly than his imagery and repetition is his effortless use of symbolism. In the novel, Vonnegut uses many varying symbols that contain many sublevels to help the reader understand the underlying meaning of the text. In “Slaughterhouse-Five,” Vonnegut uses the symbolism of the peaceful tweeting of birds, the execution of Edgar Derby, and the phrase “so it goes,” to show how misunderstood and appalling war actually is.
Poo-tee-weet is an onomatopoeia that …show more content…
He is there to symbolize the innocence of a human being, and show how in the end they will never come out of war as the the same person they went into it as. The novel does this in an interesting way by executing Derby towards end of the novel, showing that in the end we are left with nothing except what we take with us from war. “A whole city gets burned down, and thousands of people are killed. And then one American foot soldier [Derby] is arrested in the ruins for taking a teapot. And he's given a regular trial, and then he's shot by a firing squad." (Vonnegut 4-5). This quote specifically shows that Derby had let war take him over. By stealing the teapot he is giving in to the societal norms of the aftermath of a war. However, when he gets caught it shows that he is no longer the person he used to be, and being executed in a “humane” way - compared to the way one would have been murdered in war- shows how all of his innocence was stripped away from him along with the morals that he obtained before the …show more content…
So it goes can be seen as a symbol of this because of the connotation that the phrase gives off. When “so it goes” is stated, it is almost seen with the shrug of one's shoulders. As if what has happened doesn’t really matter. In an Interview conducted with the author of the novel, Kurt Vonnegut, he says that so it goes was intended to feel like a small shrug, to show how unphased human kind is by death. Not by choice, but because of how frequently we are required to encounter it (Vonnegut
Poo-tee-weet is an onomatopoeia that …show more content…
He is there to symbolize the innocence of a human being, and show how in the end they will never come out of war as the the same person they went into it as. The novel does this in an interesting way by executing Derby towards end of the novel, showing that in the end we are left with nothing except what we take with us from war. “A whole city gets burned down, and thousands of people are killed. And then one American foot soldier [Derby] is arrested in the ruins for taking a teapot. And he's given a regular trial, and then he's shot by a firing squad." (Vonnegut 4-5). This quote specifically shows that Derby had let war take him over. By stealing the teapot he is giving in to the societal norms of the aftermath of a war. However, when he gets caught it shows that he is no longer the person he used to be, and being executed in a “humane” way - compared to the way one would have been murdered in war- shows how all of his innocence was stripped away from him along with the morals that he obtained before the …show more content…
So it goes can be seen as a symbol of this because of the connotation that the phrase gives off. When “so it goes” is stated, it is almost seen with the shrug of one's shoulders. As if what has happened doesn’t really matter. In an Interview conducted with the author of the novel, Kurt Vonnegut, he says that so it goes was intended to feel like a small shrug, to show how unphased human kind is by death. Not by choice, but because of how frequently we are required to encounter it (Vonnegut