all are followed by the phrase "So it goes" (Vonnegut 210). In accordance with Tralfamadorian philosophy, Vonnegut tries to gloss over unpleasant times and concentrate on good ones. This is part of the reason why he had so much difficulty recalling events of significance that could be put into his novel. He chose to forget the unpleasant events of the war and could only remember humorous anecdotes. He explains his experiences by making light of them. The novel cannot help but draw the attention of the reader to the underlying theme of man's cruelty. Vonnegut writes: "I think the climax of the book will be the execution of poor old Edgar Derby...The irony is so great. A whole city gets burned down, and thousands of people are killed. And then this one American foot soldier is arrested in the ruins for taking a teapot. And he's given a regular trial, and then he's shot by a firing squad" (4-5). Vonnegut finds it very difficult to understand how a world can exist where a massacre of human life can go unpunished, while the same world will find a man guilty and deserving of death for plundering a mere teapot. The second title of the novel indicates Vonnegut's purpose for his writing. He intended Slaughterhouse-Five to be an anti-war novel. The title "The Children's Crusade" reveals Vonnegut's feeling that all wars are fought by the young-usually for causes that they are incapable of comprehending. Vonnegut commented on how most of the men involved in the war were "little more than children, foolish virgins in the war, right at the end of childhood" (14). He writes this novel so that war does not look wonderful, and so we do not have many more of them, and they will not be fought by babies such as they were back in Dresden (Vonnegut 15). Throughout the course of the novel, Vonnegut attempts to adopt the Tralfamadorian philosophy of life that would make it painless for him to describe the firebombing of Dresden and Billy's suffering in a cold,...
