O'Brien and Vonnegut

While reading Slaughterhouse Five, I could notice many similarities between Vonnegut and O’Brien’s writing styles.  They both seem to start telling a story, and then right when the reader starts to settle into the story, they go off on a tangent about some other story. They both tell their stories in great detail and notice very small things that most people in a life or death situation, would fail to notice. I believe they both suffered from PTSD during the war because of their feelings they express in their writings. Vonnegut, whenever describing the death of a person, ends the sentence by saying so it goes. He seems to not be phased by certain scenarios and events that he has seen in his life and during the war.   O’Brien similarly seems to not be emotionally attached to some of the things he has seen. Both writers seem like what they had seen in the war did not bother them, and that is what I believe to be their biggest problem. Any normal person, in my opinion, hearing about the events O’Brien and Vonnegut did would be shocked about what happened. In the stories they told, I was shocked but what shocked me more was that they seemed to be fine with everything that happened and accepted it to not be that big of a deal. They just seem monotone in the dialogue that it makes me believe that they have been severely traumatized by the events they have been through in their lives. These two writers have very similar writing styles and even though they were in two different wars, they both have seen some traumatizing events that have been etched into their memories forever. Because of this similarity I believe this is why the writers seem so similar to each other in the writing techniques.