We all should know by now that Billy Pilgrim is Slaughterhouse Five's protagonist. If you know that by now, you deserve this. What we DON'T know, however, is this: is Billy the only character in Slaughterhouse Five that is unstuck in time? It would be really cool to see Vonnegut's world through another character's eyes. Does Edgar Derby see his life before it happens too? Did he know he would be shot for stealing a teacup while he was a kid? Did he ever travel in time while teaching a high school lesson? Did Lazaro inform his future victims that they would be assassinated by him because he had already seen it happen? Did Weary every wake up to find himself dragging Billy through the rough patches in war, only to fall and regain consciousness in his parents' living room?
Reading another book using the same idea would be nice, but it also kills the originality that made Slaughterhouse such a huge hit. Still, the idea of other characters also travelling through time indefinitely like Billy is appealing, and could be added into the book as Vonnegut switches between characters. Sure, it would make the book probably the most confusing novel of all time, but I know that I, for one, would love to read it.
From what I understood in the book, Montana Wildhack understood the concept of time-travel, but Vonnegut made no further application of other characters and their knowledge of this concept. If the other characters were also unstuck in time, I don't think it would really change anything in the story, since a moment in time is structured a certain way and cannot be changed. Still, I'm just thinking out loud, and I thought it would be a pretty cool concept.
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