Jesus and the Cross Symbol Analysis

Jesus and the cross are important symbols in the novel, and are repeated numerous times both in the frame narrative (Vonnegut’s attempt to write Slaughterhouse-Five) and in the story of Billy Pilgrim. Billy, whose last name is a reference to those who take trips for religious purposes (pilgrimages), is a chaplain’s assistant in the war, and though he was not religious as a child, he grew up with a crucifix on his wall. In a book written by Kilgore Trout, Elie Rosewater reads about a group of Tralfamadorian-like aliens who, in a re-writing of the Gospels, insist that Jesus be a “nobody,” a person of little influence, since God’s saving of a nobody would be a more powerful and more helpful message on which to base a religion. Later, Billy stumbles upon a Trout novel in a bookstore that references Jesus and his father, a carpenter, who are invited by a Roman soldier to build a “device” to kill “a rabble-rouser.” In this way Jesus and his father actually develop the cross used in the crucifixion. Jesus represents a figure who, like Pilgrim, is capable of “moving through time,” acting as a messenger between the divine and human worlds. The crucifixion represents Jesus’ violent death, which was fated and predicted by Jesus himself (just as Billy knows his own death is coming).