Death is inevitable

The book about the money tree is summarized because it shows that people are greedy and will kill each other over money. It also shows that the tree grew very well because the humans who died make very good fertilizer, thus the tree was able to grow. This suggests that money can only exist in such vast quantities when people kill each other. It also relates to the quote “Eheu, fugaces labuntur anni” (14) because the quote comes from an ode that talks about the futility of hoarding treasure. The ode says this action is useless because everyone is going to die regardless of how much money they have.
The money tree also shows that only crazy people want to get rich because of the tree or in similar ways. Someone has to be very greedy or even out of their minds to try to get to a tree being fertilized with human bodies. Similarly, Billy Pilgrim had become rich and thus “had been rewarded for marrying a girl nobody in his right mind would have married” (151).
Billy had also gotten a lot of money from the deaths of people. He got the diamond for his engagement ring from war. Although the diamond was not growing on a tree, it had been surrounded by death.
Edgar Derby was actually executed for taking the teapot. Plundering, Edgar Derby's crime, is the act of stealing valuable things from a place. Edgar Derby was executed because he took something valuable, just like the people kill each other around the tree. He had gotten the teapot from the tunnels they were digging where there was nothing but dead people who had become “rotted and liquified” after the tunnels were dug.
The money tree is put in the story because it shows how death and riches are usually present together in this book. Rarely in the book do riches come up without being surrounded by murder.