Analysis Of Slaughter House Five

Slaughter House Five was written by Kurt Vonnegut, during the year of nineteen sixty nine. It is a story centered on war, however unlike other war novels written during his time, his book is antiwar. In the story Billy the protagonist struggles through World War II and his free will is constantly overruled by fate. He also has an arduous time accepting the idea that people can suffer so much in life and be forced to do things they are not willing to do. This due to the fact that he can relate to this. In the novel Billy “meets” tralfamadorians who have the belief that you cannot change the way the world is destined to be. This belief seems to comfort Billy as he is not fond of the way people are treated during the war. This is why the reader is directed to assume that Billy strives to believe in fate as a result of the fact that it helps him deal with the war.
This idea is advanced first of all because of these few words, “So it goes.” This short sentence which is often repeated several times throughout the novel when one dies, demonstrates the fact that all points in time can only be manifested a certain way and not the other. It ties in with fate considering it is not something you can decide or change in any way. Also the anaphora involved with this meager group of words shows that Billy is emphasizing on the idea to,“let things be.” This is in order to lead the reader to understand that there is no other way things can be and that all these deaths around him are not his fault. This is why the reader can think that Billy uses and tries to believe in fate to cope with the events that happened during the war.
Secondly when Billy, who often switches back and forth between the war and moments he was “captured” by tralfamadorians w...

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... in fate is what supports Billy’s mental state during the war.
To conclude, Billy cannot regulate all the chaos happening during the war and therefore he begins to believe in fate in order to get by all his misery during the war. We know this by looking at the short sentence “So it goes” which states things happen and there is nothing to do about them; Billy’s encounter with the tralfamadorians in which they tell him how the universe will be destroyed and explaining to him how inevitable, it is because the moment has been decided by fate; And finally by using the group of words “could not change” in order to indirectly talk about fate and pinpoint the fact that Billy can never change what happened in the war and that it is not his fault. All these are evidence that Billy felt comfort in believing that fate was the one in control of the ravage caused by the war.