Tim as a "sacred king"?

Could 1989 A Novel be seen as a cycle of birth, death and rebirth? Tim rules over the summer of '89, but symbolically dies in the fall after the quake, only to be resurrected on fifth floor when he hangs out with the freshman girls.

...came into being in the spring, reigned during the summer, and ritually died at harvest time, only to be reborn at the winter solstice to wax and rule again. The spirit of vegetation was therefore a "dying and reviving god." Osiris, Adonis, Dionysus, Attis and many other familiar figures from Greek mythology and classical antiquity were re-interpreted in this mold. The sacred king, the human embodiment of the dying and reviving vegetation god, was supposed to have originally been an individual chosen to rule for a time, but whose fate was to suffer as a sacrifice, to be offered back to the earth so that a new king could rule for a time in his stead.