For example, in the story Kurt Vonnegut wrote, "Billy saw service with the infantry in Europe, and was taken prisoner by the Germans. After his honorable discharge from the Army in 1945, Billy again enrolled in the Ilium school of optometry. During his senior year there, he became engaged to the daughter of the founder and owner of the school, and then suffered a nervous breakdown." This quote shows the antiwar theme because even after successfully becoming part of normal society again, Billy becomes mentally unstable and has a nervous breakdown. It's safe to say that this is because of his experience with World War II. It's important to the theme because it shows that Billy hasn't fully adjusted to society and probably never will, which is a problem for most veterans after going to war. Lastly, Kurt Vonnegut portrays war as a horrible act by showing the effects it has on a person's mental health. This is evident when Kurt Vonnegut writes: "They had both found life meaningless, partly because of what they had seen in war. Rosewater, for instance, had shot a fourteen year old fireman, mistaking him for a German soldier. So it goes. And Billy had seen the greatest massacre in European history, which was the firebombing of Dresden. So it goes. So they were trying to re-invent themselves and their universe." .
Kurt Vonnegut uses a sympathetic tone when describing Billy the soldier, because he wants the reader to feel sorry for Billy. By breaking Billy down into a vulnerable, sad individual, Kurt Vonnegut exposes the generic big bad soldier as a broken spirit. This persona is important to the antiwar theme because it shows that the men who fight in war are just as confused and broken as the people who don't believe in war. It contributes to the antiwar theme because it symbolizes the damage that war does to a man's mind. They both find life meaningless after witnessing the carnage of war.