Slaughterhouse 5

The Tralfamadorians say that we should focus on the good and ignore the bad. In Slaughterhouse-Five, this is what Billy Pilgrim is trying to do. He has been through the worst in a war. Not only seeing people die every day, or even in a tiny boxcar with a dead person in it, he got through the Dresden Bombing. Billy has created this concept that he has gone to the fourth dimension. He has been taken by the Tralfamadorians. In between this abduction he has gone to war, he had a family, and became an Optometrist. He "time travels", so through out all of this he already knows what is going to happen, or is he just making it up as he goes.

So it goes. Those three words mean a lot more than it is read. After every death comes this phrase. To me, this is what it means after someone dies. Life goes on; so it goes. This is how I see death in the Army during a war. The men and women of the wars would see death so often that they adapted this essence of just getting over it. This way of dealing with things was formed after a talk Billy has the one of the Tralfamadorians. They said that when a person dies they are only dead in that moment. In every other moment they are just fine. So you should just shrug it off and say, so it goes.

Another strong point in this book is the idea of looking for the pleasant parts of life. Although most of the times in Billy's life were hard and predictable he had so many

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people around to tell him it was okay. When he was in Dresden there was Weary and the hobo.

Weary though being in the Army was the best thing he could have ever gotten into. He wanted to leave the war a hero and have these amazing stories to tell his family and friends. While Billy wanted to try and get out alive. He wanted to be left on a rock to die. He had no motivation to do anything else with his life.

The Hobo