Perhaps Billy and Jesus Weren't Twins

Vonnegut describes a peculiar story from one of Kilgore Trout’s novel. The story is of a man who travels back in time to see Jesus. His goal is to find out if Jesus really died on the cross. The man, carrying his stethoscope, checks for a heartbeat on Jesus before they take him down from the cross. The man discovers that Jesus has no heartbeat and “was as dead as door nail.”
Throughout his novel, Vonnegut draws many similarities between Jesus and Billy Pilgrim. He describes Billy Pilgrim as a scruffy bearded wanderer that seems very strange to everyone. A picture similar to one we might imagine Jesus looking like. The strongest similarity to me is the circumstances of their death. Both Billy Pilgrim and Jesus know of their death yet both refuse to do anything about it. They accept their fate. Also both seem to come back to life. While Billy does not literally rise from the dead like Jesus, he does seem to come back to life with his Trafalmadorian concept of time. This story seems to reinforce the belief that Billy is like Jesus. However, at the end of the story Trout’s story makes some interesting observations of Jesus after he is taking down from the cross. The examiner notes that Jesus is only “five feet and three and a half inches long.” While it is a simple phrase, I believe it challenges the reader to think; maybe Jesus and Billy are not as similar as it appeared. Vonnegut makes obvious note of Billy’s tall and lanky body structure, a complete opposite of the structure of Jesus. Perhaps with this very blatant opposite descriptions, Vonnegut is hinting to the reader that Jesus and Pilgrim are not as alike as they seem. For example, while both know about their death and accept it, I believe they do it for different reasons. Billy believes it is his fate and there is nothing he can do about his death. It is something that will happen and there is nothing he can do to change it or anything else in life. However, Jesus accepts his death with a very strong cause. His death is a sacrifice. He has a choice, and he is choosing to die to change things. While the similarities seem to exist at face value when you examine their motives they seem to be completely different. Jesus has a cause that he believes in strongly enough to die for. He dies to change things. Billy doesn’t really believe in anything at all. He dies because he thinks it’s inevitable just like everything else in life.