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Eliot Rosewater is a patient at the same mental hospital as Billy Pilgrim. Rosewater shares Billy’s depression and disinterest in life. During his stay in the mental hospital with Billy, he theorizes that acting extremely loving to every person he meets might trick him into believing that the world is a caring place. Thus, Rosewater begins to perform kindness, referring to everyone as “dear” and engaging people in conversations that appear to be thoughtful but are ultimately mundane and surface-level exchanges. Rosewater’s situation is moving, as it’s clear that he’s suffering from depression and PTSD and is searching for anything that might make life more bearable.
Rosewater also introduces Billy Pilgrim to Kilgore Trout, an unknown science fiction author that Rosewater believes to be a poor writer but a conceptual genius. Science fiction becomes a shared method of escape for both men, liberating them from the confines of a post-war world that doesn’t understand their trauma. They both find solace in Kilgore Trout’s work, which tackles humanity’s cruelest impulses and critiques its most pervasive systems. However, Kilgore Trout and his novels become the object of both Rosewater and Billy’s obsession, triggering some concerning behaviors, particularly for Billy. While Rosewater is more interested in Trout’s intellectual ideas, even writing to him to express that he should be president of the universe, Billy actually becomes convinced over the course of his mental breakdown that Trout’s creations, such as his unique take on aliens and time travel, are real. Billy seems to have unconsciously ripped the Tralfamadorians and their perspective of non-linear time from some of the Kilgore Trout novels he read while he was in the mental hospital.
