So it goes

In this modern world, any number of things can ruin your morning. Maybe you wake up and find that you’re out of coffee. Maybe you wake up and find that your girlfriend is gone. Or maybe you wake up and find that Kurt Vonnegut, your hero, has just died.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was a lightning bolt, a dizzying wordsmith who deftly sliced through years of deceit. Writing as the people’s proxy, the most bitingly articulate average Joe of the 20th century, Vonnegut told truth to power in hilarious and often painful ways. He galvanized generations of righteously angry youth, serving as their de facto conscience whenever times turned dire.

Late last week, this newspaper ran an article mourning Vonnegut. It was written by Cristian Salazar, an excellent AP reporter. But for all the virtues of Salazar’s article, it lacked the innate student spirit and stringent hero-worship that Vonnegut so richly deserves. While we hate redundancy, we need to give this extraordinary writer–this extraordinary American, this extraordinary human being–his due.

The word “hero” gets thrown around a lot. Champion athletes are “heroes.” Actors who adopt Malaysian children are “heroes.” For some, they may very well be heroes. But true heroes affect their age. True heroes create ripples of reform. True heroes imprint themselves in memory. True heroes change lives.

Kurt Vonnegut changed lives for generation after generation. His provocative novels and piercing commentary left deep scars in the status quo. From childhood, he thrust ire and joy off the page and into millions of minds.

He wrote for the first daily high school newspaper in the nation’s history, setting a bar that no young journalists can ever hope to meet. Sorry kids, but he will always be better than you.

In college, professors rejected his writing, taunted his stories and defamed his potential. Disapproval quite possibly solidified his bond with the populace. Otherwise, this brilliant man may have been lost to swanky New York parties. Through the common pains of loss and alienation, he gained uncommon insight and empathy.

Then World War II tore everything apart.

As an Army scout, Vonnegut was captured in 1944 and taken to Dresden, Germany. As a POW, he witnessed catastrophic fire-bombings that wiped the city off the map. “Utter destruction,” he dubbed the strike, “Carnage unfathomable.” His captors forced him to dispose of the dead. Cleaning up the brutal mess his homeland had wrought, Vonnegut found the morbid irony that would form the backbone of his writing career.

His experience in Dresden led to Slaughterhouse-Five, his first masterpiece. Death is the novel’s center. Death became the focus of many great Vonnegut novels: Cat’s Cradle, Breakfast of Champions and Dead-Eye Dick, among others.

But as a humanist, Vonnegut’s real gift to the world was life. In Timequake, he wrote, “A plausible mission of artists is to make people appreciate being alive just a little bit.” While we cannot speak for everyone, he certainly helped us appreciate our lives. He brought the darkest, most agonizingly funny light into an often drab and dreary world.

Even as his health failed, he maintained a wry, devastating wit. On The Daily Show late last year, Vonnegut gave one of the great definitions of global warming. “Our planet’s immune system,” he said, “is trying to get rid of us, and should.”

On that show, one of his last public appearances, his body appeared feeble. He moved and spoke slowly, but behind his ever-bushy eyebrows, his eyes shone with the same spectacular intelligence that delighted five decades of readers.

This small article cannot do Kurt Vonnegut justice. Our words cannot equal the power or the presence of his. We must use his words.

“Life happens too fast for you ever to think about it. If you could just persuade people of this, but they insist on amassing information.”

Vonnegut’s website once listed facts about his work and life. Though it may have perturbed him, now it is simply an open cage.

In Slaughterhouse-Five, the novel that broadened millions upon millions of minds, every death is met with the statement, “So it goes.”

So it goes, Mr. Vonnegut. You will forever own a piece of our hearts.