Religion In Slaughterhouse Five

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Throughout Slaughterhouse Five, Billy makes many references to religious aspects and connects the theme of religion to them in order to full emphasize the importance of wars and death. Now, Billy continuously imagines himself traveling back in time before the bombing, but in order to time travel back far enough to avoid the misery and suffering caused by conflicts, Billy must return to when there was Adam and Eve which is one of the major references that Billy makes throughout the novel. The story of Adam and Eve is central to the belief that God created these two perfect human beings to live in this Paradise world on earth, however; they broke away from that state and formed the current world today full of suffering and injustice. As a result,…show more content…
By watching the war movie in the opposite direction, it takes on the opposite meaning in that the real tragedy of war is emphasized. Because Billy watches the war movie backwards, the unbelievably violent war has transformed itself into a period of intense healing and peacemaking right before his eyes. In reverse, the soldiers that he witnessed no longer belonged to the conflicting groups, instead Billy viewed them to humanity as a whole working together to ease suffering, death, and pain caused by the war. This is a beautiful, but it’s also a tragic one. Because Billy himself realises that it’s the opposite of reality and it’s contradictory to how things really are. War backwards is beautiful, an almost perfect world and the reversal of war would eventually lead to the creation of 2 people, Adam and Eve. Through a quote Vonnegut states, “ Everybody turned into a baby, and all humanity, without exception, conspired biologically to produce 2 perfect people...he supposed,” (75). Throughout this quote, Billy convey how he hopes for a second chance where humanity would learn from their mistakes and try to avoid war in the future. However, the main reason why Billy alluded to Adam and Eve so much in this case is to demonstrate the natural human flaws that each and every human…show more content…
The novel reveals Billy as a victim, prophet, survivor as well as a firm example of innocence once again. Firstly, Billy’s last name, Pilgrim, suggest that Billy is on a spiritual pilgrimage. Textually, Vonnegut foreshadows the beginning of Billy’s pilgrimage at the start of the epigraph. “The cattle are lowing, the baby awakes. But the little Lord Jesus no crying he makes,” The epigraph suggested that Billy Pilgrim, like that of Christ, is innocent and undeserving of the fate that he is given. Despite being handed this unfortunate destiny, no crying does the baby in the epigraph, which refers to Billy, makes. Throughout the entire novel, Billy cries very little even though he often faces things that are worth crying about and in that respect, he reflects the Christ of the carol within the epigraph and later on in the novel as well. “When Billy saw the conditions of his means of transportation, he burst into tears, Although he hadn’t cried about anything else in the war,” (194). Both Christ and Billy really only cries when witnessing the sight of others suffering. Now, just as Christ serves as an eternal role model for Christians, Billy also becomes eternal due to the Tralf. philosophy that Billy will live on through a cyclical events. Also, similar to a Christ who seems to have known his death before hand, Billy as well know
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