The first line in the book is: “All this happened, more or less.” By writing this, Vonnegut is welcoming the reader to question which parts of the book are and aren’t true.
One of the main messages, in my opinion, that Vonnegut tries to send through this book is that war is not only destructive in the physical sense, but also in the psychological sense.
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder that makes it difficult to tell the difference between real and unreal experiences, to think logically, to have normal emotional responses, and to behave normally in social situations.
We are seeing more and more cases where war veterans are suffering from this terrible disease. Vonnegut may trying to speak on behalf of the mental health of war veterans.
In my opinion, I think Billy suffers from this illness. It is important to note that Vonnegut himself uses the word schizophrenia in his novel right at the beginning. "This is a novel somewhat in the telegraphic schizophrenic manner of tales of the planet Tralfamadore, where the flying saucers come from." (p. 11) Therefore, it can be argued that Vonnegut himself wants the reader to believe that schizophrenia is an important element in his novel.
Very often, doctors will also describe schizophrenia as a special strategy that a person invents in order to live an unlivable situation (John Hopkins). According to this definition, it is rather a normal and understandable reaction to the negative environment.
Billy’s life consists of very negative and depressing phases involving a series of personal catastrophes which include the death of Billy's wife, father, his negative childhood, difficult children, the plane-crash and most importantly Billy's experiences in the war. These negative experiences are present throughout his whole life starting with his childhood. Scientists will claim that Schizophrenia is triggered early in a person’s childhood. In Billy’s case it was triggered when he was thrown at the bottom of a YMCA pool, the reason for which doctors state that he is put into a mental institution.
The narrarator also mentions that Billy first started time travelling after his plane crash. It is also possible that his mental state can be derived from the physical consequences of the plane-crash. As Billy is the only survivor, and as he seems to suffer from severe injuries of the head, one might also consider the existence of Tralfamadore a consequence of brain damage.
Another hint to the question whether Billy only imagines his time-travel experiences or not, are the novels written by Kilgore Trout. In his novel The Big Board, the fictitious character Trout narrates the story of a man and a woman being abducted to another planet and being shown in a zoo. As Billy is a fan of this author, one might conclude that he has taken a story he has once read to be real, and that he has projected the situation of Trout's characters on himself. For a guy who imagines himself to be eating a pear as a giraffe and thinks he has slept with a famous actress on another planet, it is very probable that Billy is nothing more than a classic schizophrenia case.
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