"Billy cried very little, though he often saw things worth crying about, and in that respect, at least, he resembled the Christ of the carol: The cattle are lowing, The Baby awakes. But the little Lord Jesus No crying he makes."
~ Slaughterhouse-Five, page 197
There are a lot of religious references and symbols in this book. Billy is often compared to Jesus, like in this passage. He witnesses a lot of sin and bad in the world, and he carries that on his shoulders throughout his life, a little like Jesus bearing the sins of humanity to save us. Both Jesus and Billy knew how they would die and accepted it gracefully. The only thing I can't connect is purpose - Jesus died to save our sins, and the whole Catholic religion is based on that act and trying to be a better person to attain salvation, however, Billy represents the exact opposite of that - he is just drifting through life with seemingly no purpose whatsoever but to be.
The other religious analogy I found was in Kilgore Trout's novel The Big Board. The aliens on the planet, the people in the zoo, and the plot are obviously based on Billy's life and his abduction, but I think the aliens also represent God in the story. They control all the conditions under which the humans live and can manipulate their moods and pretty much anything about their lives. It gets to the point where the humans actually pray to the aliens - they play God throughout the book. Because The Big Board represents Billy's alien experience, I think that the Tralfamadorians also are analogous to God; Billy adapts their ideals and perspectives on life, and he is subject to their care while he lives on their planet with Montana. I'm not saying 100 percent that they control his time-traveling, but obviously he is connected to them in a special way since no one but Billy and the Tralfamadorians can experience life out of chronological order. I kind of have a theory that the Tralfamadorians are controlling Billy's sporadic time travel; they play God in that sense. They also have an omniscience, especially because they can view the universe in four dimensions and understand much more about, well, everything.
I kind of thought it was interesting that the aliens said they never had much interest in Jesus Christ and yet they had what we would consider a very faithful outlook on life.
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