The failed quest of Vonnegut the character underlines another important theme of the novel -- although life may seem 'fated' as Pilgrim perceives it to be, our own perceptions affect how we see our past and reconstruct the past. Our minds are erasers, always writing and rewriting events. Our perception of time is highly personalized. For example, Vonnegut the character is surprised that his old friend Bernard has changed over the years, and is no longer the young, hard-drinking man he knew in his youth. Vonnegut the character appears in some of Pilgrim's reminisces as a peripheral character, but the reader is never certain how much he or she should trust this strange figure, who speaks with so much authority about how Billy Pilgrim is feeling.
Award 3: A trip around the world for Valencia Pilgrim
Valencia's award, of course, would require her to get a reprieve from her untimely death while visiting her husband. Valencia is one of the saddest characters in the novel. She loves her husband, even though he regards her as overweight and unattractive. She spends most of her life devoted to making a happy home and making life pleasant for her husband and children, even though her husband shares very little of his real, inner turmoil with her. She does now know how much emotional damage Billy suffered after the wartime bombing. She drowns her sorrows in overeating, and both her husband...
Her death, like Billy's brain injury, is the result of a random accident, poisoning by carbon monoxide, but also, one could argue, it symbolizes how she has sacrificed everything for others. Billy asked her to marry him, she did not force him to do so, although to Billy Pilgrim, his action feels forced in his mind because has never found her attractive. Then, Valencia's son Robert goes off to war and her daughter Barbara comes into conflict with an apparently insane Billy, when he begins to talk about the aliens he has seen. Valencia's children do not even learn from her husband's wartime experience, or emulate their mother's love for Billy.
Valencia's tragedy is not that she is unloved, but that her life has been so circumscribed by her role as a wife and mother, and by her perceived unattractiveness, which causes her to overeat even more. A trip around the world would have given her experience and self-esteem. She could have become a better listener and confidant of her husband, and more importantly gained a sense of respect for herself that would have encouraged her to give up over-eating, and to pursue her own interests in life.
