The Purposeful and the Passive

In Slaughterhouse Five, every time a person dies the narrator says the phrase “so it goes”. Everyone who has read the story is aware of this. Considering this a book concerning the Second World War and the bombing of Dresden, the topic of death is everywhere. Everyone seems to be equal parts confused and outraged the narrator would treat the topic of the deaths of thousands, with such a dismissive phrase. However, I’d argue that we’ve all been saying “so it goes” our entire lives.

What do I mean? Well, as we all know, human beings aren’t the most caring creatures ever made. We have made war into a fine science and done awful things to each other. But for an individual to admit that they themselves are awful to others at times is a hard thing to do. Where am I going with this? I am headed into the subject of empathy. When someone we know dies we feel a pang of grief deep inside of us. When someone we care about and have a close connection to dies it often leads to tears and a state of grief for long periods of time. It’s a natural thing to happen to us. Those are the feelings we conjure up when we think of people dying. Tears and depression. However, we hear about people dying all the time. People die in movies, people die in novels, and people die in jokes. We are constantly assaulted with images and tales of death. One of the most common places to talk about people dying is in, say, a history class. You get endless amounts of numbers of people that die in certain events. Some in wars, some in plagues, and some in needless bloodshed. Over the course of human history estimates say that over one hundred billion people have died. Eventually, hearing that one hundred people died in a certain political rally doesn’t matter to you anymore. We become desensitized to it. 

That’s where I’m going. You might get angry to hear that some twenty five thousand people died in the firebombing of Dresden. But that will soon fade. You’ll be in math class in an hour and your brain will forget it until the next time it comes up. Your mind will passively say “so it goes”. You’ll forget and brush these deaths off your conscious so you can focus on other things. After all, you don't know anyone who died in Dresden. You haven't had a deep connection with someone who died in Dresden. It's just a number. 25,000. 

But the notion of death still holds traction in our mind. When we think of death, again we think about loved ones dying. This makes Vonnegut’s “so it goes” insulting and dismissive to our idea of death. Vonnegut is taking our passive shrugging off of deaths in history, and making us think about it in a critical manner. As Vonnegut stated, this is an antiwar novel and the best way to possibly stop war is to get rid of this passive "so it goes" and start to analyze our own humanity and empathy for the dead.

That’s my interpretation of the “so it goes." Take it or leave it.