"So it goes." pg. 32, 35, 36, 37, 38, 41, 45, etc.
Now, some people may question the obssesive repitition of this phrase. However, this phrase is the author's purpose of writing the book. The book is an anti-war book. It's point is to show people the horrors of war and how terrible it is. Using the phrase "So it goes" after every death in the book shows the attitude that people acquire after going through war. They lose sensibility to death. However, the average person does not know that this happens to soldiers. So, he conveys the attitude the soldiers feel, due to no fault of their own. We recognize that this is a terrible attitude, and it opens our eyes to recognize how much war messes up people's minds.
Repeating the phrase "So it goes" really annoyed me at first, but your explanation makes sense. I never really thought about it this way. I think this adds to the theme of people being extremely passive about war.
ReplyDeleteI also recognized how the phrase portrays passivity to death. The soldiers have witnessed so many deaths and other horrors to the war that they are almost immune to feeling the emotions commonly associated with death. After reading the first part and skimming it twice (once for blogs, once for notes), I finally realized that the Tralfamadorians are where Billy got the phrase in the first place because they did not believe that people actually died; they only appear dead. Soldiers use it differently because even though they know that someone is really dead, there is nothing to do about it. The use is different but the meaning is the same, they do not care about the death. I think this is important to know that the war hardens people so that they no longer possess the same human emotions because that aspect of war is not always shared.
ReplyDelete