Mumbo Jumbo by Kurt

Billy Pilgrim is everything one wouldn't suspect as a hero in a war novel. He's is cowardly, suicidal, and weak preferring to let snipers take shots at him than duck under cover. But this apathetic demeanor is all chalked up to his Tralfamadorian perspective on time in which all moments in time happen at the same time repeatedly. Because of this he believes that he already knows the future as he has already experienced every moment repeatedly and knows there is no free will. This gives Billy an excuse and justification to not care about or do anything productive because he knows that all of his actions are predetermined.

But I don't like this interpretation of his actions as I find it too unrealistic. I think this Tralfamadorian perspective is a derivative of his instability from trauma inducing moments from war. This is the more realistic approach to Billy's actions as it doesn't involve aliens and other nonsense. Instead Billy has an unstable grasp of reality, frequently afflicted by powerful flashbacks to different moments in his life. But these flashbacks are aided with the creation of the Tralfamadorians and their ideology in his imagination to help him cope with the trauma. In fact the creation of the Tralfamadorians could've been  as soon as Billy's capture in the war as the Tralfamadorians had also abducted Billy and put him in a zoo. This would mean that Billy's despondency is due to war trauma and PTSD with the usage of the Tralfamadorians as a coping mechanism.

The idea of Billy suffering from PTSD also fits in nicely with Kurt Vonnegut's goal of writing an anti-war novel as it shows the wild imagination and suffering from one of its participants as they re-experience past traumas through a warped reality caused by the war.