Richard Torres

English 210

Research Paper

Slaughterhouse Christ

After reading the novel, Slaughterhouse Five, written by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., I found my self in a sense of blankness. The question I had to ask myself was, "Poo-tee-weet?"(Vonnegut p. 215). Yet, the answer to my question, according to Vonnegut was, "So it goes"(Vonnegut p.214). This in fact would be the root of my problems in trying to grasp the character of Billy Pilgrim and the life, in which he leads throughout the novel. The pilgrimage that Billy ventures upon is one of mass confusion, running with insanity, finally followed by sanctuary, if laid out in a proper time order sequence. Billy is a victim, prophet, survivor, as well as a firm example of innocence and inspiration. The answer man in a society searching for answers. He is the new prophet. Yet, can Billy pilgrim be compared to the, "Savior", Himself? Is Billy molded after Christ? Aren’t we all prophets, if we are children of God? Is Billy a living testament of a new religion? These are the questions that need to be examined in order to fully understand the essence behind the character of Billy Pilgrim.

The first area that should be examined is the aspect of the pursuit of the acquired knowledge of being. Billy, who believes in the concept of destiny, without the use of free will, received this lesson from the aliens on Tralfamadorian. Meanwhile, Jesus Christ gained his views supposedly from the creator Himself, by being the Son of the God. Yet, the creator who controls all of life and knows all is extremely comparable to the citizens of Tralfamadorian. These four dimensional beings can see time from beginning to end in any particular order and play a godlike role in existing by seeing this time line of life. "Imagine that they were looking across a desert at a mountain range on a day that was twinkling bright and clear"(Vonnegut p.115). They like God take no part in the changing or altering of the past, present or future. "The moment is structured that way"(Vonnegut p.117). God does not interfere, due to the concept of free will for beings. While the Tralfamadorians take no part because of their believe in no free will. "Only on Earth is there any talk of free will"(Vonnegut p.86). The existence of free will is the major difference between the two sources of knowledge. God uses free will to allow actions to take place in order to remain the father figure or overseer of life, in which Jesus Christ preached to the masses. The Tralfamadorians seeing in the fourth dimension exclude the existence of free will because of their ability to see the time line of existence at any moment. Thus believing the pre-determined destiny of all creatures. This believe does not allow them to take any action in the change of the universe because they do not have the free will to do so, therefore time goes without altercation. This believe is supported when the Tralfamadorians state that they know how the universe ends and will do nothing about it because it is the way it shall be, even though they themselves cause the destruction. "We blow it up, experimenting with new fuels for our flying saucers; the whole Universe disappears"(Vonnegut p.117).

The source of these two men’s knowledge plays a very important role in their development as prophets. Jesus Christ, who came onto the earth as a simple man born in a poor surrounding, was the only child of a carpenter. His earthly father was a servant to the people. While on the same wavelength, Billy was the only child of a servant to society, a barber. Both men eventually grew up to become servants of society. Jesus was a trained carpenter while Billy became an optometrist and then the two later became prophets of their beliefs. These two men had similar backgrounds in society as they grew into men.

Other then their basic background comparisons as individuals, we can also see the parallels in the steps they took to become the prophets they were killed for becoming in their own minds’. Jesus, after his baptism from John the Baptist, went into the desert in order to fast and pray for forty days. During the baptism the Holy Spirit supposedly came down to earth and touched Jesus. "And Jesus when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water: and, lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him"(New Testament p. 9). This can be seen as parallel to Billy’s experience of being thrown into the pool by his father when Billy heard sweet music as if he was being touched by something magical. "there was beautiful music everywhere"(Vonnegut p.44). While out in the desert Jesus was tempted by the devil and found the path of righteousness to enable him to go off and preach the word of God. Billy on the other hand had two different occasions in which to find the true path. The first voyage was that of the war. Billy’s eye witnessing account of the bombing of Dresden and the acts of war were similar to the temptations of the devil or in this case Hitler. Pilgrim was tempted by the senseless violence around him to act as a sinner and join in the bloodbath, in which government calls war and what Hitler called progress. Billy being a chaplain’s assistant and not carrying a weapon at all during the war represents the act of denouncing the evils presented before him during his tour of the war in Germany. "He asked Billy what he thought the worst form of execution was. Billy had no opinion"(Vonnegut p.36). The idea that Billy was the innocence in a time of madness helped him become a humanistic individual, in a sense respecting life and not to destroying it. He gained a great amount of vision from the soul piercing events that took place in the war of the world. This is mainly seen after the bombing of Dresden when he was involved in the cremation and recovery of bodies. "The one flame ate everything organic, everything that would burn"(Vonnegut p.178). The other moment of enlightenment occurred while Billy was a specimen for the Tralfamadorian’s. During this time Billy learned the way of the fourth dimension. He learned to develop the acceptance of time and situation. Before he believed in free will, but after the lesson he received about the universe he learned to see his life in a different plane of vision as well as other individuals lives. Yet, was Billy’s voyage to the planet Tralfamadorian a fact or an illusion created in the mind of a man lost after witnessing horrifying human characteristics? " Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is ‘So it goes’"(Vonnegut p.27). Then also we can challenge the factuality in the story of Jesus’ confrontation with the devil. Is it possible that these two men came up with the visions they claimed to have seen within their own minds? Were these men reinventing the world in which they lived?

The aspect of reinvention now must be explored. Jesus preached that God was a compassionate God who acted as a father figure for all beings. This was a complete opposite of what was understood and believed at the time. God was seen as a ruler demanding obedience without compromise, according to the Ten Commandments that Moses gave to the people. Therefore the lessons of Jesus were seen at first as a falsehood. This reinvention of the personality of God was not accepted and he was seen as a blasphemer in the church, especially because he claimed to be the Son of God. When he was actually saying that God is the father and we are his children including Christ? While in comparison Billy had the same difficulty getting his message across to the people because they were set in their beliefs and only acknowledged him as a man gone insane? This act of not taking him seriously is witnessed when he was kicked off the set for the talk radio show in New York and when Billy’s daughter Barbara constantly denounces his stories as stress induced confusion. "It’s all just crazy. None of it’s true!"(Vonnegut p.29). The only man who relates and is interested in the stories of Billy is the man Kilgore Trout. Trout himself is a lowly writer who is misunderstood and portrayed as a man searching for illusion through science fiction. Was it confusion, illusion, searching or just creation of myth?

The beliefs that these two men try to express can be recognized as an attempt to depersonalize dream in order to make sense of the present problems at hand they have in understanding the world (Mustazza p.103). In the time of Jesus, religion was the answer for the suppressed people under Roman rule. Billy lived in a period where science was overwhelming religion as the answer to life questions. Thus Pilgrim creates his own mythical place where time has the answers to the questions of life. With this solution, myth has become his focus of understanding the great questions of, "why?" Similar to the lessons of Jesus, where he gives the mythical solution of the kingdom of heaven or the progression to salvation in the afterlife, when you are rejoined with the Father. This sense of hope by both men is an attempt to take the complexity of life and make it seem like simple innocence for not only themselves, but also the society they live in. The turn to simple innocence is for Billy the path to understanding the concept of infinity of life in time and time travel. While for Jesus it is the same only through the use of the afterlife, where your soul continues to live.

The two beings in their life’s expressed great humanity at all time. Jesus who understood all people, from the lame to the prostitutes, such as Mary Magdalene, never expelled any harm to his fellow beings. The one exception came when Jesus went to the temple with his disciples and destroyed the vendors out of disgust, because of how commercialized the idea of faith had become. "Ye fools and blind: for whether is greater, the gift, or the altar that sanctifieth the gift?"(New Testament p.52). Billy expressed humanity through not reacting to the situations in which he knew the outcome. His technique of passiveness throughout his life was in a sense humane by not altering the time line of the universe even though he could have saved lives in the present. The scene when the plane crashed on route to Canada is an example of Billy not altering the destiny of the universe. "He knew it was going to crash, but he didn’t want to make a fool of himself by saying so"(Vonnegut p.154). This may appear inhumane but by not altering the future the destiny of the universe was in harmony. He also shows humanity similar to Jesus by accepting the pornographic actress Montana Wildhack into his life and seeing beyond the lifestyle she once had. Her conversion from promiscuity to time believer is very similar to Magdalen. The two women were treated as people and not objects and through that compassion or expression of humanity they were able to change their outlook upon life. The humanity of Billy can be challenged at a few points in the novel. He never once cries during the violence of the war except when he sees the horses are being mistreated and need care. This is puzzling but an answer is assumed that emotion is difficult to express in such conditions as war when many are killed on a daily basis. This idea is supported by the fact that Billy when an adult back in the states, cries on a daily basis. The withheld grief and visions he remembers haunts him as he continues to live, which may be a root to his reinvention of belief.

The next area that should be examined is the comparison of the demise of the two prophets themselves. When looking at Billy we see the time at war as a similarity to the Stations of the Cross. Billy is taken and marched to the train that will take him to the death of his innocence. He is taken to the prisoner camp and humiliated by being given a coat, which is too small for him. It is also a civilian coat that makes him stand out from his other comrades. This coats symbolizes the robes that were given to Jesus in order to humiliate him because they wanted him to look like a king as he proclaimed himself to be. Billy’s robes is one of poverty and weakness serving the same purpose as the meaning behind the attire that Jesus is given. This also relates to the Kilgore Trout book, "The Gospel From Outer Space", which portrays Jesus as a bum in which Billy is seen by his outfit. The scene when Billy is being pushed down and made to look helpless for the German propaganda is similar to the beating and humiliating of Jesus before his trial. The marching of Billy and the troops into Dresden also is similar to the stations of the cross in that Billy is stared upon and made fun of because of his appearance, just as Jesus was yelled at when he carried the cross through the crowd. The idea of knowing ones’ killer is also similar that Jesus knew that his friend and follower Judas was to hand him over to the Roman’s but Jesus does nothing to stop the event from occurring. Rather he accepts the situation, just as Billy welcomes his death by the hands of his fellow prison mate Paul Lazzaro, in Chicago in 1976. The aspect of being eternal is key in the similarity of the two men’s death. One is to be eternal in a religious sense through the resurrection, while Billy is eternal through the philosophy of Tralfamadorian. With the never-ending cycle of time travel Billy completes his prophecy (Martin p.7). Just as Jesus dies for the salvation of the people in order for them to enter the kingdom of heaven. Both deaths fulfill a promise, Jesus the promise of the prophets before him and Billy the promise of Lazzaro.

Is Billy a Christ figure or a just a simple man who lost touch with reality due to the circumstances he had to deal with at such an innocent time in his life? This question is very complicated to answer. Billy through his actions in the novel can be seen as a great hero just as Jesus. He started of as a passive and weak individual, but eventually became a leader through the use of his newly constructed belief in time. The path he chooses to take was not one, in which he willingly took, but according to his belief was chosen to fulfill. This thought shows similarities to the Christ story. Jesus supposedly didn’t choose the path, but was chosen for the path by the Lord and the prophecies of the prophets before the coming of Christ. There are some that feel Billy is not a Christ figure. "Billy, however, is a false Christ figure, for he saves no one, including himself" (Martin p.7). This statement I feel is false and not to thought out. Christ didn’t actually save anyone in a realistic sense. He is believed to have opened the gates of heaven, performed miracles such as raising the dead and gave us all salvation through his own death. Yet if you examine the acts of Christ you can only try to prove the events that took place on earth. These acts are debatable do to the fact that the only proof we have that they occurred are in the New Testament. The written works of the apostles were written apparently from word of mouth after much time past the actual existence of the man known as Jesus. These stories could have been taken to the extreme and exaggerated because of the purpose they were written for. The basis for the gospels was to help develop the religion of Christianity. Therefore we can’t really say that Jesus saved anyone, without some type of doubt in our minds unless we are extremist in Christianity. Thus Billy can still be seen as a possible Christ figure since he himself never saved anyone either. He went on his path of time and relives the moments over and over again. The idea that Billy didn’t save himself is not a factor. Jesus never once tried to save himself at the end of his life because he knew and accepted the fact of what needed to be done. Billy was also in the same area of thought. He knew the future and when he would die but he never stopped the incident from occurring because it was part of his life and the prophecy he needed to fulfill.

In conclusion the idea of comparing Billy Pilgrim to the Christ is valid. Jesus was in fact only a man, just as Billy was and through the reinvention of perception the two were able to go forth upon their individual paths. They both went through similar trials of life and fulfilled a promise or prophesy in life which were not only for man but also for themselves. Jesus to save the souls of God’s children while Billy was to keep the time sequence of the universe in stable order. God touched the two men; Jesus led by the Creator, while Billy was a follower of science and time. Which god is the true God and from that which man is the Christ? Vonnegut’s Christ is of the modern gospel and is a very convincing prophet. The idea is debatable either way and shall be argued for quite sometime.

Works Cited

Martin, Robert A. "Slaughterhouse-Five: Vonnegut’s Domed Universe". Carrollton:

Notes on Contemporary Literature, 1987 March, 17:2, p.5-8.

Mustazza, Leonard. Forever Pursuing Genesis: The Myth of Eden in the Novels of Kurt

Vonnegut. Toronto: Bucknell University Press, 1990. p. 102-115.

New Testament of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Nashville: National Publishing

Company, 1968.

Vonnegut, Kurt Jr. Slaughterhouse-Five. New York: Dell Publishing Co. 1982.