Throughout the novel, Vonnegut approaches the topic of war in an unorthodox fashion, using ominous stylistic elements in order to bring about a dark, humorous tone. The language advances Vonnegut’s personal claim that war is cruel, not heroic as historians often present it. The first major example of Vonnegut’s dark style is presented in Slaughterhouse-Five’s repetitions of odd, incongruous statements, which allow the author to moralize and depict how humanity has become desensitized to war. An oft-repeated refrain, “So it goes,” ritually trails every scene of death. In one harrowing example, the phrase signals Billy’s own death: “In the next moment, Billy Pilgrim is dead. So it goes”. The unpretentious diction and simple syntax cause a somber tone, as if the narrator were sighing; the straightforward response to a sorrowful event jars with the expectations of the audience. In fact, phrases such as this are intended to “[keep] the reader steadily aware that the text is the highly subjective product of a troubled mind at work behind it”. Thus, the repetition of the statement allows Vonnegut to remind the reader that the novel is not merely a silly story, but his own somber tale of morals.
A second example of Vonnegut’s ominous style lies in his usage of the onomatopoetic “poo-tee-weet” to otherwise fill a silence; the sound of a bird’s call brings attention to Vonnegut’s opinion that the only response to warfare is to be speechless. Paradoxically, it is the inclusion of a sound that brings attention to the silence. The novel is ended simply, darkly: “There was nothing going on out there... Birds were talking. One bird said to Billy Pilgrim, ‘Poo-tee-weet?’” In this case, the sustained silence contributes to a somber tone. Raymond Olderman argues in Beyond the Wasteland, “Poo-tee-weet represents a ‘cosmic cool,’ a way of viewing life with the distance necessary to cope with the horrors that both Billy Pilgrim and Eliot Rosewater [another Vonnegut character] experience”. Again, the stylistic device makes the novel personal to Vonnegut; the sound “poo-tee-weet” represents his own internal silence at the horrors he has seen.
Delving deeper into the novel, a thematic analysis begins to unfold. Vonnegut presents the general theme that a life without free will is not worth living. The treatment of thematic conflict between this concept of free will and the opposing notion of fatalism, or the idea that destiny is predetermined, causes the reader to question whether the world is as Billy Pilgrim presents it. This thematic conflict is initially addressed through alien creatures called Tralfamadorians, who introduce to Billy the disputed concept of time being nonlinear and permanent. According to the Tralfamadorians, “...we are all, as I’ve said before, bugs in amber... Only on Earth is there any talk of free will”. The idea that time is “amber” is presented as a direct, incompatible contrast to Vonnegut’s central theme. 