While madness, unpredictability, and chaos pervade the entirety of Breakfast of Champions, schizophrenia plays a unique role in explaining both the psyche of the narrator and the meaning of the novel as it relates to society as a whole. Schizophrenia is a spectrum mental disorder whose many symptoms include delusions, hallucinations, and fragmentation of thought; the nature of schizophrenia is so little understood that some define it as an umbrella term under which many different diseases exist.

In Vonnegut’s novel, the narrator fears that he may have inherited his mother’s schizophrenia. He demonstrates tremendous anxiety and arguably delusive behavior by inserting himself directly into the narrative, exploring the boundaries of authorial control by interacting directly with his own creations. He functions as an omnipotent creator in a fictional universe, finding salvation from pessimism when one of his characters declares that human beings are defined by their awareness, the quality which gives meaning to life and separates man from machine. This breakthrough allows the narrator to experience spiritual growth, but the act of confronting reality through a series of distorting lenses such as fantasy, irony, and satire is inherently schizophrenic. Our pursuit of truth in art is endlessly fragmented, a reflection of the endless mental fragmentation of society in an increasingly interconnected and vocal world.

If the human world were a single brain, what would control the pattern and flow of thought? An ideal world, like an ideal mind, might have a single dominant personality and one cohesive pattern of thought, but reality is far more complex. As seen in Breakfast of Champions, real society is an endless array of individuals whose lives carry equal weight, with no clear distinctions between major and minor characters. In this way, the most honest definition of reality is a culmination of billions of competing, equally important personal narratives. This chaotic, fractured, endlessly splitting notion of reality can be seen as an extension of the ‘split mind’ concept for which schizophrenia was named, as it applies not only to the condition of a single mind but also to the condition of humanity as a whole.

-Cara