Memorable Passage

“American fighter planes came in under the smoke to see if anything was moving. They saw Billy and the rest moving down there. The planes sprayed them with machine-gun bullets, but the bullets missed. Then they saw some other people moving down by the riverside and they shot at them. They hit some of them. So it goes.

            The idea was to hasten the end of the war.”

            This passage is from a book I read very recently, Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. This scene takes place near the end of the book while the main character, Billy Pilgrim, is still a prisoner of war in Germany. After the city he is held captive in gets bombed by American and British forces more planes come in and shoot down at the people in the city. Billy falls victim to friendly fire but survives the experience. However, other people near him were not so lucky. This passage stands out to me because it captures what Vonnegut was trying to accomplish in this book. With his dry writing style and dark humor the author manages to satirize war in this scene and throughout the book. In addition, it also includes probably the most famous quote from this book, “So it goes.” The author uses this phrase over a hundred times during the book and these words proceed the death of any character. This phrase uses understatement to downplay all the deaths that occur during the book and it serves as a constant reminder to the reader that death is inevitable during times of war.