Two Authors

When I first started reading Slaughterhouse Five, I immediately saw similarities between Kurt Vonnegut and Tim O'Brien's writing. Both authors have the tendency to repeat certain events that happened in their life.  As I remember the class when we talked about Tim O'Brien's story, it seems that these events haunt him or that he can only remember specific things that happened. I also believe that certain things can trigger an aspect of that memory, which explains why each story is told with different details.
Both of these authors also appear to be scatterbrained. When trying to retell these events they experienced, Vonnegut and O'Brien seem to not be able to focus on what they are trying to say. Instead, they both tend to jump around and talk about different things instead of focusing on one story.
I also think it is very obvious that both of these men suffered from PTSD. As we all know that war can be a cause of PTSD, they both have many of the symptoms, such as reliving memories and feeling jittery.
The biggest similarity I noticed is that they both make you question your thoughts and their own stories. By opening with "All this happened, more or less." in Slaughterhouse-Five, I instantly wondered how I am supposed to tell if anything in this book is true. Same with O'Brien in How To Tell a True War Story, he makes note every few paragraphs with little blurbs about war stories such as "a true war story is never moral" or "...it's difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen." Relating to PTSD again, I feel that this also shows that they themselves are unsure of what really happened and what they are even writing about.