So It Goes?
As you might have guessed if I’m in your English class, I’ve found Slaughterhouse Five a fairly frustrating book. Not because of its structure, which, while odd, isn’t too difficult to read, but, fundamentally because I disagree with what feels like the ultimate message of the book. Not the anti-war message, though I have comments on that as well, but instead what Vonnegut writes every time we observe someone die, what Billy says the Tralfamadorians taught him to believe: “so it goes”.
So it goes? Is that really all we can hope for out of this world? That there’s nothing we can ever attempt to do to change the world, that if something ultimately does get better it’ll just have been fated to be? What sort of anti-war novel is that, where even the Tralfamadorians, when asked, reveal that, in fact, with their perfect views of the future and the past, they have wars more terrible than anything we have ever seen here on Earth, and that there is no purpose to even attempting to prevent them, because it can never be done.
It certainly shows a futility in war, but it doesn’t offer anything else. Everything else portrayed by the novel is just as futile as war. There was never any chance to prevent World War II, or any other conflict in human history, it was always going to happen. And sure, it extensively demonstrates the apathy induced by war, but because the only perspective we get is effectively that of Billy Pilgrim, and he is supported by Vonnegut’s direct narration throughout. It is not, after all, Billy who remarks “so it goes” after every death, as many occur when Billy Pilgrim would not be able to know of them. Some of these deaths could have been easily averted by simple actions, such as the case with the death of Valencia. That, at least might have been random chance. But what about the death of Edgar Derby? A single decision on the part of a single German officer would have let him live, and yet, in Slaughterhouse Five, the officer can make no such choice.
And what does this do to the little moments of beauty? What does it matter that the innkeeper decided to let in the Americans, if the Russian prisoner took Billy off the fence, if they were always going to do so anyways? More pressingly, all of those people have at least the potential to become Billy. All of them have seen horrors, and there is no reason for Billy to be the one kidnapped by the Tralfamdorians above the others, as they too could have become unstuck in time.
In the end, at least to me, the notion that nothing we do can change is the world is not at all comforting. I would in fact call it quite disturbing.
I definitely agree to some extent, that it was particularly frustrating to receive a lack of emotional response while reading, particularly as someone who emotionally connects with almost everything they come across. However, while the "so it goes" plays into the apathy we see from Billy that particularly frustrated me, I also didn't feel like it was the only way you could read into it. To me, it rang more along the lines of the serenity prayer, and simultaneously criticizing the futility of war as well as the people who say that war is inevitable.
ReplyDeleteThere's an interesting contrast between the serenity prayer and the futility of Tralfamadorian time. While Billy argues that the Tralfamadorian concept of time grants him a sort of serenity, I understand where Sasha is coming from about the notion that we can't change anything -- it's disturbing and terrifying. The serenity prayer offers the idea that some things are inevitable, but not everything is, and you should do what you can to change what is meant to be changed. Billy is coasting on the first part of the serenity prayer alone with "so it goes," and I think that's a certain level of apathy I hope not everyone has. Because those little and rare moments of beauty still meant something to us as readers, and doesn't that matter for something in the end? We were touched by Billy's sudden and overwhelming empathy for the horses, we enjoyed his interactions with his dog, we found his scarecrow episode with the barbed wire humorous. We are humans, so these things matter to us. They may mean nothing to the Tralfamadorians, but in the end that doesn't matter because we live on Earth, not Tralfamadore.
DeleteI agree that "So it goes" is not a very satisfying life philosophy, but it makes a lot of sense as a response to what Billy has experienced. Both in his childhood and during the war, Billy was subject to forces greater than himself, and so he seems to create Tralfamadore, and the idea of "So it goes," in response to his strong feelings about control.
ReplyDeleteI mean....what's the point of changing the world if we're just going to leave it. Most things are futile. So many people die to zero fanfare. If a person dies alone with no body to miss them is it really tragic? Death is only sad when there are people feeling a loss. It's bound to happen. Sometimes it seems really undeserved and early, other times not, usually doesn't make a lot of sense. I agree though, the overlying message that we are helpless in the world and can't make a difference is disturbing, and I would say wrong. We can make a difference, we just have to make it where it matters.
ReplyDeleteI agree with what Elliot commented. "so it goes" definitely isn't something everyone should be saying when someone dies, but given the trauma which Billy has experienced, it has some meaning behind it for him. I can see your point at the end of your post, that knowing what is going to happen takes away from the meaning of these actions because they were always going to happen.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the idea of “so it goes” is quite disturbing. Humans as a whole often very much value the idea of free will and thinking that we may not in fact have free will can be terrifying. It really does end up putting a rather apathetic spin on things, and anything that could’ve been seen as wonderful or amazing just ceases to be so because it was always destined to happen. However, I don’t think Vonnegut is trying to suggest that this is the case in real life. What’s interesting to me is the use of the phrase “so it goes”. To me it doesn’t really suggest the idea of everything being predetermined, but more like “things like this happen”. I don’t know, just a thought.
ReplyDelete"So it goes" doesn't *have* to be read as a kind of shrugging resignation, a kind of "so what?" or "who cares?" (although I agree that this is often the effect, when it's peppered throughout Vonnegut's narrative--especially when applied to things like the bubbles in a glass of champagne "dying"). But there's also the more cold and clear-eyed acknowledgment that time's passage, change, decay, death are indeed the way "it goes" in life--when a death is narrated, the author reminds us that this is *always* how life goes, and this inevitability might mitigate the sense of tragedy somehow. I've had readers in class report the opposite effect from what you describe here--"so it goes" serves as a reminder of how widespread death is in the book, and it doesn't allow us to shrug it off because it keeps calling attention to the death. It can be read as a kind of challenge or provocation to the reader: do you really want to be able to say "so it goes" to every one of these instances? Do you *resist* the Tralfamadorian view while reading, and is this maybe part of the point?
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