Quote 4
On Tralfamadore, says Billy Pilgrim, there isn't much interest in Jesus Christ. The Earthling figure who is most engaging to the Tralfamadorian mind, he says, is Charles Darwin—who taught that those who die are meant to die, that corpses are improvements. (10.2.1)
Darwin's idea of evolution teaches that species die out for a reason. But in a sense, it seems odd that the Tralfamadorians would appreciate this idea, because they deliberately refuse to ask the question Darwin answers: "Why?"
Quote 5
Billy is spastic in time, has no control over where he is going next, and the trips aren't necessarily fun. He is in a constant state of stage fright, he says, because he never knows what part of his life he is going to have to act in next. (2.1.5)
Billy has not only just lost control over the most fundamental constant we come to expect in life—time—but he also feels phony in performing his own life. This lack of conviction about who he is makes Billy a nontraditional hero for a novel. Who in the novel does have a strong sense of self? And is this necessarily a good thing to have?
Quote 6
Billy, after all, had contemplated torture and hideous wounds at the beginning and the end of nearly every day of his childhood. Billy had an extremely gruesome crucifix hanging on the wall of his little bedroom in Ilium. A military surgeon would have admired the clinical fidelity of the artist's rendition of all Christ's wounds—the spear wound, the thorn wounds, the holes that were made by the iron spikes. Billy's Christ died horribly. He was pitiful. (2.19.15)
One reason Billy does not seem to seek comfort in God (even though he is a chaplain's assistant before he is taken captive by the Germans) is that he associates Christianity with a suffering Christ. Billy himself is frequently compared to Christ—in the epigraph and because of his job in the army—so why would he seek solace in a religion that is okay with his suffering?