Even
though O'Brien's story is set in Vietnam circa 1962 and Vonnegut's story is in
Europe circa 1944 it is clear that both authors have similar ways of describing
the events they witness and sometimes even sharing an experience. Both of them
use a stream-of-consciousness style of writing, in which the narrator suddenly
changes topic when their interest is piqued and represent the way people
actually think. For example in Slaughterhouse 5 Billy is describing Ronald
Weary and talking about the dirty picture he had with him. He then dedicates a
page or so to telling the history of dirty pictures and describing the picture
itself before going on with his story. They also make great emphasis in
making sure people understand what a true war story is and how it should not be
confused. They ask their readers to question everything they hear because that
way they might actually find the truth. O’Brien uses more vivid descriptions;
they are a little bit more poetic, while Vonnegut is more clinical about
describing events. However both forms of description are used in a way that the
reader questions whether those events really happened that way or the author
went completely out of his mind. Probably to emphasize their idea of ‘don’t trust
everything you hear’ or to show us how little we actually know about war.
Vonnegut goes into more detail but O’Brien mentions it, about how children
(18-20 year olds) are sent to fight a battle that is meant for men. Then people
take these stories and turn them into great adventures of glory and honor when
the reality of it is nothing more than just gore and destruction. Both O’Brien
and Vonnegut are opposed to assigning morality to war because it simply does
not exist, not in a true war story.
I like that you mentioned how the way O'Brien and Vonnegut write represents their actual brains. They write in a scattered fashion, using no time lineage and they just go back and forth from one story to the next while having flashbacks from the past. I think it really captures the human brain after war. Another thing I found quite interesting that you mentioned in O'Brien's text and so far in Vonnegut's book is that they do make you question what they write and it's so very different from other books I read about war. Usually there's a hero and some moral at the end. But not with these two author's. They don't claim to be heroes. They are just normal people telling a war story.
ReplyDelete