Scott Caplan’s blog

What follows is the “review” I recently typed into my Now Reading sidebar widget for Slaughterhouse Five. (NB: If you buy any of the books on my widget through their Amazon links, I supposedly get some sort of Amazon associates credit towards even more books, yay!). Since I didn’t quite like the formatting on my library page for the book, I decided to turn it into a full-fledged post. The review is primarily intended as a question for those who have read the book, and I point out that my rating of 8 out of 10 is only because I found it just a tad too big a chunk for me as a reader (the 8, therefore, is only relative to me, and is not a general statement about the book). The review follows on the flip…

I don’t have the hubris to “review” such an esteemed book (though apparently I do have the hubris to rate it an 8 out of 10), but I would like to put here some thoughts on the book that have come out of my recent email conversation with my cousin Steve. What follows is intended for those who have read Slaughterhouse Five.

There are only two instances where Vonnegut doesn’t mention “So it goes” when somebody dies. They’re both references to Edgar Derby, the guy who was shot for stealing a teapot. Why not?

The first instance is at the end of the first paragraph of chapter six. The second is at the very end when Montana says to Billy on Tralfamadore, “And I’ve heard about the high-school teacher who was shot. He made a blue movie with a firing squad.” with no ‘So it goes’ after the end-quote.

My cousin suggested that it was perhaps a statement about capital punishment (Edgar Derby having been executed by a firing squad), and in so doing, recalled the issue of changing the nature of things. That is, Vonnegut insists that even though other murders and deaths are inescapable, capital punishment is something that can be overcome.

I personally doubt this explanation (reasoning below), but it highlights an important point about the refrain in question. The refrain is intended to point out that things couldn’t have been any other way. Indeed, Tralfamadorians would insist that the moment of that person’s death always was, is currently, and always will be thus. So it goes.

All this discussion, however, raises the issue of preventability. Most of the deaths in the book are acceptable deaths in that they were intrinsic to their respective moments (in a Tralfamadorian notion of moment) and therefore can’t be avoided. Even when Vonnegut mentions a hypothetical death, or merely abstract thought of death, he writes the refrain. But something about Derby’s death is unacceptable. It was avoidable. The whole Tralfamadorian conception of people as machines reinforces a deterministic worldview that falls right into place with the whole “So it goes” thing. Edgar Derby has two qualities that separate him from this trend:

1) He somewhat transcends his environment. When the American Nazi Campbell recruits the men, he’s the one who says something, despite his environmental conditioning to do otherwise (to say no, or even to accept the offer of good food to betary your country).

2) His death was unequivocally unnecessary. The war was over, Billy got away with a huge flippin’ diamond, and Derby gets killed for taking a teapot.

This second thought is close to the capital punishment thinking, but if indeed it is a statement against capital punishment, that would leave Vonnegut less troubled simultaneously by the bombing of Dresden and by the contract-killing of Billy than he is by the firing squad death for Derby. By a sort of ethical version of the Squeeze Theorem, we have to reject the premise.

But I still don’t quite like my two answers. At the very least I would like a more fundamental reason that combines them, or even a separate explanation altogether. Vonnegut seems to me the sort of author who has a very specific reason in mind for why he did this.