So it goes.

“So it goes.” is Kurt Vonnegut’s recurring refrain in his novel *Slaughterhouse-Five* (1969). The phrase appears repeatedly—most often immediately after a death is mentioned—reflecting the book’s fatalistic, darkly comic tone and its Tralfamadorian philosophy of time, in which all moments exist simultaneously and death is only one moment among many. Vonnegut, a WWII veteran and survivor of the Dresden firebombing, wrote the novel as a fragmented, anti-war response to that experience. The refrain functions as a stylistic signature throughout the narrative, punctuating scenes of violence, accident, and ordinary mortality with a blunt, almost ritualized acceptance.

The line compresses Vonnegut’s bleak humor and moral outrage into a deceptively simple shrug. On one level it signals resignation: death happens, catastrophes happen, and the world keeps moving. On another, its very repetition becomes accusatory—by forcing the reader to confront death again and again, it exposes how easily violence can be normalized, especially in wartime. In *Slaughterhouse-Five*, the phrase also echoes the Tralfamadorian view that mourning is misplaced because the dead are still alive in other moments; yet Vonnegut’s insistence on repeating it can feel less like comfort than like a coping mechanism, a verbal tic that marks trauma and the limits of explanation.