Tralfamadorian Beliefs

Completing Chapter 2 of Slaughterhouse-Five, the story begins to unwrap itself. A new character is presented, Billy. Billy, after serving WWII, begins to ‘‘lose it’’. With his wife’s death and an airplane crash that left him changed, Billy starts to tell stories of his experience with the tralfamadorians. These tralfamadorians are aliens that he claims kidnapped him stopping time and space so they could teach him their culture and planet. I was interested of how Billy described them, small, green with eyes on their palms that could see in four dimensions.

Alas, how Billy described what they do when they die is that they simply live on in the past and future. I would like to compare these beliefs with the many diverse religions and faiths we have here on earth. The Christian belief, mine, says that at the end of someone’s life, they either go to heaven if they were good or to hell if they committed sins. For me this is a bit weird and I don’t really believe in it, don’t tell my God. This pretty much is the same for Islamic religion. On the other hand, Buddhism and Hinduism believe in reincarnation, which is after you die, you are able to come back to life in a different body, not necessarily a human. Finally there is another religion that states that if you die, you can come back to life with your dead body, something like a zombie. I am not sure which specific religion or faith that is but it is from somewhere in Africa. In the end I saw that Billy was really interested in the tralfamadorian beliefs and it leaves me wondering, will Billy somehow show proof of this experience?