Vonnegut and Spiegelman

Both Vonnegut and Spiegelman chose to cover their true meaning behind delicate hints and allusions. In my opinion, “Maus” and “Slaughterhouse Five” are not about proving a point. Instead, these books present the absolute of good and evil in a simple and brief way, so that we may be able to differentiate all of the many gradients that lie among the stories. Although both stories are about war veterans and how the main characters of both stories relives their war memories over and over again, the writing style of both the authors are quite different. I found Spiegelmen’s writing much easier to understand, because it is a graphic novel and also the events are very clear and well stated and also it is very much more chronologically on the limelight than Vonnegut’s writing. Vonnegut’s way of describing Billy Pilgrim’s relieving memories is so scattered around that it is very difficult to understand when he time travels, when he is abducted by the aliens, and when he is actually in his present. Billy Pilgrim’s story is a chronological failure as well as the fact that his body and mind are always in separate place living separate events. On the other hand, Spiegelman described the story with clarity where Vladek shares his war memories with his son and is much more easier to understand as it is a conversational setting and plus it being a graphic novel makes it much more fun to see each character’s expressions on their specific dialogues. It is interesting that to me that we cannot ultimately say that either “Maus” or “Slaughterhouse Five” was planned to be an anti-war book. As all the events in the stories are described to be so emotional and so much more meaningful, that it occurs to me about O’Brien’s saying about how wars are never moral and if they are then it is never true.