Paranoia
From start to finish, this book revolves around Bong Bong's paranoia. He neither trusts himself nor those around him. The problem is, he starts to become less and less bothered by this distrust. He stops fighting the feelings of suspicion and deceit, giving into them entirely. When he moves to San Francisco, he writes back to Frisquito that everyone is lying about him, making up stories. He knows this isn't true, but he stops caring at some point. He prefers his own company to that of others, spending hours lost in his head reading or looking through his telescope. Who knows what delusions he was supporting. As a result of his rampant paranoia, he loses the distinction between dreams and reality. Readers are left to make their own conclusions about the validity of his last few adventures.
Impulse
In addition to his paranoid delusions, Bong Bong struggles with impulse control. His parents decide to send him to America, but he doesn't argue with them. He just gets on a boat. While in San Francisco, he approaches his career in a lackadaisical fashion, devoting no forethought to his choices. On a whim he enrolls at Herald's College to study the culinary arts, completely unrelated to his actual goal of becoming an actor. As each challenge approaches, he follows his first impulse. Upon meeting Charmaine, he goes home with her that night. Then he continues to see her every single day after that, until he finally moves in with her after Carmen kicks him out. Even while living with Carmen, though, he'll do random crazy things like searching all day for a prostitute who will have sex with him for $25.
Abandonment
Bong Bong suffers from some pretty acute mental disadvantages which conspire together to make him particularly susceptible to insanity. The people in his life, however, are important factors which also contribute to this special susceptibility. He suffers from abandonment issues, having been let down by every significant relationship in his life. His parents send him out of the country without really consulting his permission. Frisquito, his best friend, stops responding to his letters after a while. Carmen, who never really cared for him, accuses him of all sorts of terrible things, eventually kicking him out of her home. Pochoy, his brother-in-law, kept silent during all of Carmen's tirades. When he moves in with Charmaine, she too starts to doubt him. Finally she leaves too, claiming he's out of his mind. Bong Bong may go crazy, but he didn't accomplish it on his own.
Waking Delusions
Near the end of the novel, Bong Bong starts to describe his mental state as dreamlike. His waking moments start to feel ethereal, as if he were still dreaming. Real time starts to feel like memories to him as he exists in a constant state of deja vu. Eventually, the effect becomes so powerful that he actually forgets his own identity. He becomes like a walking zombie. Although this devolvement is a natural result of his rather traumatic lifestyle and propensity toward mental instability, Bong Bong is responsible for his crisis as well. Somewhere along the lines he stops fighting his paranoia, giving up on social interaction and ceasing to try and distinguish his lucid moments from his delusions.
