Vonnegut vs. O'Brien

When examining Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five against Tim O’Brien’s “How to Write a True War Story,” the writing styles of each appear very similar to one another. Slaughterhouse-Five is a novel that can be read as a war story or as a simple science fiction story, but approaching it with knowledge of war stories can greatly affect the way that it is perceived by the reader.

Both O’Brien and Vonnegut employ a very scattered method of storytelling. Ideas bounce around like atoms in space, bumping into each other and rattling around. The murkiness of the narratives reflects the chaos of the battlefield as well as the ambiguity of wartime morals. Oftentimes, particularly in Vonnegut’s writing, a story will be interrupted by a completely new idea, as though to further explain the story at hand, which then overtakes the narrative and leaves the initial story unfinished. It gives one the impression that the stories are stream-of-consciousness narratives told by authors whose minds are heavy with thought, but who are struggling to articulate what they want to say.

Repetition also plays a role in both authors’ stories. While O’Brien would outright repeat the same account multiple times through his passage, Vonnegut repeats phrases and images throughout his work, such as the two poems introduced at the beginning and the phrase “so it goes” every time death is mentioned. Repetition is crucial to war stories because it can represent flashbacks as well as many veterans’ repetitive soul-searching in light of wartime events.

Finally, the element of truth, or lack thereof, forms a backbone for both pieces. Vonnegut opens his story by outright stating that “All this happened, more or less.” He proceeds to launch into the story of Billy Pilgrim and his visit to another planet and traveling through time, a highly unbelievable tale. It is entirely unclear who Billy Pilgrim is. Vonnegut also admits to changing all of the names in the story. O’Brien insists that “in a true war story nothing much is ever very true.” It is common for war stories to have these element of untruth in them, as those that tell them are only telling them as they perceived them and are often forced to make things up for the sake of believability.