What is true?

“Billy was unconscious for two days after that, and he dreamed millions of things, some of them true. The true things were time-travel.” (200)

This excerpt comes from right after Billy’s plane crashes on its way to an optometrist’s conference in Montreal, which Billy knew was going to happen. He fractured his skull and had to be taken to a hospital. Earlier in the novel, we learn that after this accident is when Billy begins to go slightly crazy and talk about the Tralfamadorians and time-travel, and becomes unfit to practice his profession.

This passage begs the question of what is true in the novel and what is Billy’s imagination. It makes the reader recall the very first words of the entire novel, “All this happened, more or less.” Well, what really did happen? Since we know that time travel is not real, but it states that one of the only true things that Billy dreamed of is time-travel, we are presented with an enigma. Perhaps this is the moment that all of his “time travels” begin because his mind has to go somewhere while he is unconscious. In one journey that Billy goes on, he is entirely convinced that aliens take him to a ship in outer space whose inhabitants see in four dimensions and treat him like a zoo animal. The Tralfamadorians end up having a huge effect on the reader. Their point of view that time is not linear, but all moments exist at once, is similar to the structure of the novel. Therefore, the reader does not get a 360-degree view of Billy as a character, but learns to accept the events that occur during random snapshots in time as what is important in the novel.

Q: What effect does the Tralfamadorian’s viewpoint that everything happens at once have on the reader’s understanding of the structure and narrative of Slaughterhouse Five?