Vonnegut vs. O'Brain

The way both Kurt Vonnegut and Tim O’Brian share their stories from war overlap with similarity. First off, both authors feel the need to clarify the amount of truth in their writing before the storytelling even commences. O’Brain writes “This is true”, while Vonnegut begins his narrative with the line “All this happened, more or less”. I feel as though both writers either doubt their own memories or have encountered enough people that found holes in their stories that they feel the need to reassure the reader that they are not lying. However, this plants the idea in the reader’s head to be wary of the facts shared by O’Brain and Vonnegut. Another similarity between the authors is that they cling to phrases or stories that they repeat throughout their writing. O’Brian is constantly retelling the story of his fellow soldier’s death. Vonneghut repeats the phrase “so it goes” and the lyrics to a nursery rhyme. The repetition of certain terms serves as a safety net to the authors. Finally, both Vonnegut and O’Brain speak as though they are telling their war stories as a timeline. Each writer likes to speak in chunks, with no real flow or transition between ideas. It’s not so much one big war story, but tinier anecdotes that happened all at one time. This style of writing can become a little confusing, especially since both authors enjoy going back and forth through time and not paying attention to a certain order of events. We have spoke in class recently about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and the effect it can have on soldiers. Through Tim O’Brian’s writing, we decided that he was showing symptoms of the disorder. With all of the similarities between the pieces, I think that Vonnegut may be suffering from some symptoms of PTSD as well.