Is Billy Pilgrim Mental Or Insane

The horrible events in war causes a wounded soul. Healing a wounded soul is a difficult process and can take years. In the end, the wounded soul is never fully healed. In war, a wounded soul can be mental damage. In the novel Slaughterhouse Five, the protagonist Billy Pilgrim becomes mentally damaged, wounds his soul, during World War Two. Billy may seem like an average veteran, but he truly becomes insane. Billy experiences horrible events within the war and causes him to do some questionable actions. He also comes to believe that miniature aliens exist. Billy is so insane, he believes his hallucinations are really him becoming “unstuck in time” and travelling through time to enact his future. Kurt Vonnegut demonstrates that the protagonist,

Vonnegut based Billy Slaughterhouse Five, off of his friend, so the 4th dimension miniature alien race doesn’t really exist. It’s safe to say that Billy was hallucinating, caused by his mental damage, thinking he really saw the aliens. Billy further proves his insanity from his arguments about the aliens, revealing that he truly believes the existence of the aliens. “'It's all just crazy. None of it's true! ' 'It's all true.' Billy's anger was not going to rise with hers. He never got mad at anything. [...] 'There is no such planet as Tralfamadore.' 'It can't be detected from Earth, if that's what you mean,' said Billy.” (14). Billy is arguing with his own daughter, thinking that aliens exist, ultimately making a fool out of himself. Billy is being preposterous and senseless, he can’t even truly get angry at anything. Billy is acting like a child within this excerpt, he doesn't look at real life facts and solely believes what he sees, even though it is all just a hallucination. As well, Billy continues on insisting that these aliens exist. “Billy insisted mildly that everything he had said on the radio was true. He said he had been kidnapped by the Tralfamadorians on the night of his daughter's wedding. He hadn't been missed, he said, because the Tralfamadorians had taken him through a time warp, so that he could be on Tralfamadore for years, and still be away from Earth for only a microsecond.” (15). Billy keeps insisting on his belief of the existence of the aliens and is so confident he shares his thoughts with everyone on the radio. The fact that this occurs in Billy’s daughter's wedding night means that Billy could have been drunk, but it will still prove Billy’s insanity because he doesn’t have the intelligence to decipher what happens while he is drunk and what is real. If Billy were normal, he would know that he was hallucinating or drunk, but since he became