Billy Pilgrim Attitude

Slaughterhouse Five, or the Children's Crusade: a Duty-Dance with Death by Kurt Vonnegut is a science-fiction, anti-war novel that tracks the life of Billy Pilgrim who has become “unstuck in time” and his experiences such as: his time as a hapless soldier to the firebombing of Dresden; his time on the planet Tralfamadore where he was displayed naked in a zoo; and even his own death. These events, rejecting a conventional narrative, are presented in a fragmentary fashion. It is within this novel that many deaths occur; very few deaths are similar but all are followed by the phrase “So it goes.” This fatalistic refrain is not remembered for its unique wording so much as for how much emotion—and dismissal of emotion—it packs into three simple words that simultaneously accept and dismiss everything.
The readers are first introduced to this phrase when the author mentions a taxi …show more content…
Billy, although conforming to these ideals, uses “So it goes” as if to dismiss his woes. This is unlike the Tralfamadorians they are able to visit the deceased because they are still well in other instances; while Billy, who lives in a two dimensional universe, just blatantly disregards any trouble that arises. In essence, Billy is an trivial person that is terminally stuck in the mindset that life can only be lived in an emotionally detached state.
As previously shown, “So it goes” is used to normalize the mentions of death to the characters: almost as if to numb them. Vonnegut is using this to call attention, to have an inverse effect compared to the ostensible meaning of the phrase. "So it goes" says that death is inevitable, that suffering happens, that people should numb themselves so they will not have to deal with negative emotions, but it should be taken into consideration that this is a satirical novel, therefore, "So it goes" also marks all the tragedy and sorrow that should be