Slaughterhouse 5: "So it goes."

"While Billy was recuperating in a hospital in Vermont, his wife died accidentally of carbon-monoxide poisoning. So it goes." Page 25

       The repetition of this phrase throughout the novel, every time someone dies, creates a sort of nonchalant attitude towards death. This is fitting in a novel centered around the horrors and destruction of war. Billy's perspective of death as just another event that occurs in time takes the edge off of his life. The reader never feels that Billy is in any real imminent danger, being as they know he lives past the war. This displays Billy's character as one of peacefulness, which sharply juxtaposes the harsh realities and dangers of war throughout the novel. The presence of death is often noted, though rarely heeded, throughout the novel. This also helps the reader to follow the Tralfamadorian tendencies of accepting death as one part of a reality, in which life is just as present.