So It Goes, Slaughter-House-Five Essay

Sarah Johnson
Mrs. Reidenbaugh
Humanities 6/7
April 2, 2008

So It Goes

I believe that war's foremost purpose is this: to kill one for another's "survival". Vonnegut very strongly expresses his hatred towards war by leading us through the life of Billy Pilgrim. By reading into Billy's life we learn the severe effects that war has on one's everyday life. Through the many random and seemingly irrelative examples he provides, we can more easily discern the true characteristics of war. I believe that nearly every comment Vonnegut has made in this book is relative to the huge concept of war. While having only read this book one time through, I was able to make only a few connections, but I am sure that I will learn to recognize more in my future readings of this book. Slaughter-House-Five by Kurt Vonnegut has undoubtedly achieved its goal in expressing the disgusting attributes of war.

"How nice, to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive." When participating in war, one may experience nearly every single awful and gruesome thing this world could possibly offer. As a result, living life after being in war without those traumatizing and eventful experiences can hardly be called living at all. When on the battlefield, you experience raw evil firsthand. After clearly seeing what this world is really made of, appreciating and recognizing what good there is in the world may be easier said than done. To the world, a soldier may seem dead in spirit. I believe however that in reality, all of their emotion and feeling is left on the battlefield.

Vonnegut's clear description of what true beauty is (quietness, trust, and sharing) aids one in their realization of war's disgusting characteristics. Gunshots, crying, screaming, and arguing complete the soundtrack of war. Quietness is something that it lacks, which contributes to its ugliness. When fighting in a war, countries are constantly suspecting each other of wrong doing. Trust is something they can not afford in battle, which again paints even more clearly a picture of war's hideousness. Different countries unwillingness to share things such as land only feeds their selfishness. This selfishness results in war and hatred between countries.

Vonnegut provides for us a very powerful illustration on the full intensity of war by explaining war in "rewind". One certain illustration describes the dismantling of bombs and how the dangerous minerals that they contained were 'hidden cleverly so no one would ever find them'. I think that this specific detail is very important because it uses reverse psychology to highlight America's vicious and cruel tactics in war. The illustration also talks of high school students who had been American fliers. This fact reveals the extremely young age at which people were being made to fight and also the educational benefits they were forced to leave behind. Vonnegut does not simply rewind back to the very start of war, but he traces humanity back to the very first human beings on earth; Adam and Eve. This addition portrayed the innocence that humanity had first started with which then provided a clear scale of just how destructive the world had become.

In reading this book, my own dislike for war has been strengthened and has grown into hatred. While it deprives many of being physically alive, it also hinders more from being emotionally alive. "So it goes."