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In Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, death is not seen by Billy Pilgrim or any other character as traumatic. The death of one character isn’t given any more importance or attention than another person. Whether it is the mention of the assassination of Robert Kennedy, the methane poisoning of Billy’s own wife or something as tiny as opening a bottle of “dead” champagne, death is followed by the Tralfamadorian phrase “So it goes.” Billy finds comfort in the way Tralfamadorians view death. His trauma of experience of death is consoled by the idea that people who are dead in one moment are alive and well in many other moments. For example, Billy assures one of his twelve-year-old patients that his father was “very much alive still in the moments the boy would see again and again.” (Vonnegut,172) The importance of acceptance is evident when Vonnegut writes “So it goes” after every mention of death in the novel and according to some research, the phrase appears one hundred and six times throughout the novel. This implies Vonnegut’s feeling that life goes on. It is important that we learn that Vonnegut views experience as just a moment in time and we should reflect on the happy moments and all will be well.
I find it interesting that Vonnegut uses the representation of death in the novel in such a peculiar way. In Slaughterhouse-Five, Death is portrayed without sorrow or guilt and it embraces the inevitability of the event without regard for its cause. According to Billy’s theories that he has adapted from the Tralfamadorians, inevitability is key in understanding time because death is inevitable, but not permanent. As a time traveler, Billy experiences his own death many times. In the novel, Billy “experiences death for awhile. It is simply violet light and a hum.” (Vonnegut, 182) In this way, Vonnegut describes death as something that isn’t something seen as an unpleasant experience or an important experience, but rather and experience that one is required to go through but isn’t a big deal.
Death makes its appearance in many vignettes throughout the novel, and along with death comes acceptance or coping. The themes that the novel revolves around are not just based on war, but the aftermath of the war and how it affects the characters. The Serenity Prayer is referenced twice in the novel. For example, “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to always to tell the difference” is framed and hanging in Billy’s office as a way to keep him going, “even though he ways unenthusiastic about life.” (Vonnegut, 77) Billy knew that when the Serenity Prayer says to accept the things you cannot change, he was referring to the past, the present and the future. In Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut uses a combination of these things to accept death and accept Dresden. His main source of comfort comes from the Tralfamadorian way of thinking, but the Serenity Prayer is a religious way of accepting the past, the present and the future.
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