Monday, January 13, 2014
Similarities Between Vonnegut and O'Brien
One of the big similarities between Vonnegut and O'Brien is their sporadic and jumbled sense of narration. They will both continuously refer back in time or to another event while trying to write about something else. It can be confusing, but I see it as an effective and innovative use of perspective. In class we talked about this undermining their credibility and how this effects how "true" a true war story can be but it really does help to convey this feeling of disillusion and stress. Another important similarity between the too is the dark humor that they both apply to their writing. O'Brien writes about Sanders singing "Lemon Tree" as he pulled Lemon's limbs down out of the branches while Vonnegut writes about his near death experience in the pool being like an execution. Exhaustion also plays a big roll in both writers stories. When Vonnegut is talking about Billy Pilgrim traveling with Weary and the scouts his writing style makes me think of dehydration because Billy seems so distant from the world. O'Brien sounds like this when he rights about watching Lemon get blown away, they both convey this sense of distance from reality that makes it really difficult to actually understand what is transpiring during those moments.
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I like how you brought up how both writers bring in dark humor in their writings. This is something that I failed to notice, but I agree with you. It’s almost sickening to laugh about things like peeling a dead man off of a tree or drowning, but the way the writers talk about makes it seem like it is not that big of a deal. I also agree that both of them seem to distance themselves from reality after the war. It is almost like they think their whole life was just the war, and now they are just reflecting back on it.
ReplyDeleteI agree on how you related both authors through their continuous referring back to their past war experiences that happened during the war. Although it is very confusing because if you miss a part while reading the story then it is very easy to fall behind as both authors travels time with not providing with much clarifying sentences. They use dark humor, which I liked how you brought up, because it is definitely really hard for any author to entertain their readers with something horrifying that happened in the past and yet being comical about it. I also liked how you compared Billy and Lemon and the events that they faced during the war.
ReplyDeleteYour line stating how both authors "convey this sense of distance from reality that makes it really difficult to actually understand what is transpiring during those moments" got me to thinking if this just another way to show how the mind might be working in moments like these. Is the distancing oneself from these situations the minds way of trying to protect itself from psychological harm? Also this could be the same reason for the soldiers humor in singing "Lemon Tree" while he is preforming such a gruesome task, to help save his sanity.
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