The Gospel According to Tralmafadorians

This chapter contained a passage that got my full attention and I thought it was a very interesting way of answering a question that has been present for many years.

“The visitor from outer space made a serious study of Christianity, to learn, if he could, why Christians found it so easy to be cruel. He concluded that t least part of the trouble was slipshod storytelling in the New Testament. He supposed that the intent of the Gospels was to teach people, among other things, to be merciful, even to the lowest of the low. But the Gospels actually taught this: Before you kill somebody, make absolutely sure he isn’t well connected. So it goes. The flaw in the Christ stories, said the visitor from outer space, was that Christ, who didn’t look like much, was actually the Son of the Most Powerful Being in the Universe. Readers understood that, so, when they came to the crucifixion, they naturally thought, and Rosewater read out loud again: Oh, boy-they sure picked the wrong guy to lynch that time! And that thought had a brother: ‘There are right people to lynch.’ Who? People not well connected. So it goes.” (Vonnegut, pg. 108)

I thought that this passage was very wise and when I thought about it, it was also very true. When people think about the killing of Jesus, we usually think it is an atrocity. However, the killing of the other two men in the same place on the same day has no big effect on us. This, of course, is wrong because Jesus was a man like any other and there is no reason why his assassination should shock us more than that of others. I thought that it was amazing that someone would come up with this theory because I would never have been able to create one that was this “simple” yet as true. With this part I think it is easy to see that Vonnegut is criticizing religion in a very direct way, and when read this I thought that it was weird that no religion has been directly mentioned in the novel, sort of like what happens in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter novels. Another point that was very interesting to me in this chapter was the fact that they had 5 sexes in Tralmafadore, and when I tried to understand the concept of the differences between the sexes being time, and not physical I got very confused. Anyhow, I still think this concept is very interesting, and one that I would like to understand one day.