In war, there is always one constant. Death is inevitable in war. Death can be a traumatic experience, especially if someone witnessed it. In the novel Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut creatively describes how war traumatizes and desensitizes people. Two motifs that appear repeatedly throughout the book are the phrases “so it goes” and “blue and ivory.” Vonnegut uses motifs to show how war changes people's perceptions of death. The phrase "so it goes" is the most commonly used phrase in Vonnegut's novel. The expression appears every time death is mentioned. The phrase "blue and ivory" is used several times when Vonnegut is writing about a corpse or Billy's bare feet. An example where we can find the phrases "so it goes" and "blue and ivory" is when Billy encounters a dead tramp that he had met while stuck in a train car as a prisoner of war. Vonnegut describes the tramp by saying, “Someone had taken his boots. Her bare feet were blue and ivory. Somehow it was all right that he was dead. So it’s okay.” The phrase “so it goes” is used in this quote in exactly the same way that it is used all the other times it appears in the novel. Vonnegut uses the phrase in a casual, nonchalant manner. “So it is” is used as an expression that means that something does not matter, or that it is just the way it is and the situation cannot change. Vonnegut incorporates this flippant phrase to demonstrate to readers that war gives people this mentality. This mentality is manifested in Billy when he says, “Somehow it was all right, his death. So it goes. »Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay In war, death is so common that it becomes fortuitous and predictable. War desensitizes people to view unnecessary killing as a normal phenomenon. The phrase “blue and ivory” describes the tramp’s feet. When people think of a dead body, the image is usually of a person with pale bluish skin. Vonnegut uses this motif as imagery to give the reader dark images of death. But Vonnegut also uses this expression to describe the feet of Billy, who is very much alive. On Billy's daughter's wedding night, Billy gets up because he can't sleep. When Billy gets up, he looks at his feet, “they were ivory and blue.” Vonnegut uses this phrase to describe the living and the dead because he is trying to make the point that in war there is no difference between the living and the dead. War leads people to believe that life and death are also the same. Vonnegut tries not to make a distinction between the living and the dead, because it's the same in war. Vonnegut uses the motif “poop-tee-weet?” to show how war is so traumatic and horrible that it cannot be described in words. The expression “poo-tee-weet?” » repeatedly throughout the book. In the first chapter, Vonnegut tells readers that he was unable to write clearly about his experiences in Dresden. He writes of the Dresden massacre: "It is so short, so confused and so confusing... because there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre, and that is always the case, except birds. And what do the birds say? Everything there is to say about a massacre, things like "poop-tee-weet?" » ». Something like the Dresden massacre cannot be described in words because.