Chapter 6

"So Billy experiences death for a while.  It is simply violet light and a hum.  There isn't anybody else there.  Not even Billy Pilgrim is there" (Vonnegut 143).

This image shows violet light against darkness, similar to Billy's experience of death.  This scene in the novel describe's Billy's brief time spent being dead before he jumps back in time to when he was alive.  This scene highlights the low view of religion in Slaughterhouse Five.

This is an unusual interpretation of death, and one directly contrasting with the ideas of an afterlife that most religions have.  Slaughterhouse Five seems to take a low view of organized religion in many places, and this is another one of them.  This scene implies that there is no afterlife, and by extent, many elements of organized religion are wrong.  Rather than traditional views of what happens after death, Billy keeps experiencing things by traveling back in time to when he was alive.  This goes along with the Tralfamadorian ideas that Vonnegut presents in the novel, that a dead person just isn't in a very good situation in that moment, but is perfectly fine in many other moments.  I think that Vonnegut's low view of religion may relate to disillusionment with good and humanity after experiencing the horrors of a World War.