Vegetable

"Why don't they let him die?" he asked Lily.
"I don't know," she said.

"That's not a human being anymore."

Billy's roommate in the hospital, Professor Rumfoord, and his wife have this conversation about him while he is assumed to be in a vegetable state. Billy is aware of his surroundings, what is happening and what is being said, but he doesn't fight this attitude people have taken toward him. If he cared to say anything in response, it would probably "I know! that's what I've been saying all along, I just want to die." Finally people are treating him how he wish they would have his whole life. Here, medically he is a vegetable and it seems to be less painful to speed up death.

But hasn't he been a vegetable all along? What does it take to be considered a functioning human being? If Billy Pilgrim has never made any choices, and really tried to live, has he just been slowly dying all this time?