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Anya Malis

Mr. Pace

Honors Literature G

25 April 2023

Comparative essay

A war story often tells the tale of the strong soldier going to war and coming back as a

hero to the love of their life. But war stories as a genre have expanded to telling the true

devastation and mental scars of war. In both Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, and The

Things They Carried by, Tim O’Brein both authors uniquely shed light on some of the

inhumanities of war and how we view it as a society.

Slaughterhouse Five, by Kurt Vonnegut, tells an unconventional war story, exposing the

traumas and devastation of war. Billy Pilgrim and Roland Weary hear intimidating barks, “The

dog, who had sounded so ferocious in the winter distances, was a female German shepherd. She

was shivering. Her tail was between her legs. She had been borrowed that morning from a

farmer. She had never been to war before. She had no idea what game was being played. Her

name was Princess” (Vonnegut 34). Princess, shows the innocence of the many people who have

been deployed in battle. Along with the fear of the so-called “enemy”, when they are also just as

scarred and innocent. It illustrates the duality, and contrasts, of war. How even the enemy is

scared and still human. War frames people against other people, causing death, economic and

societal destruction. Slaughterhouse five, has a unique way of exhibiting the truths and

perspectives of those affected by war. Following, When Billy is watching TV, the program
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begins playing in reverse, “When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were

taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America… The minerals were then

shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide

them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again” (Vonnegut 45). The irony of this

passage is that war is irreversible, once people are killed it cannot be reversed. Throughout the

book, Billy is greatly affected by PTSD. Within his subconscious, when he “jumps” it's his way

of escaping. Following this moment, he jumps in time, avoiding the trauma he is faced with.

Both sources show different perspectives of the devastation of war, how so many innocent

people are put in situations they should never be in. And the returning effects and consequences

of what they see and have to do to survive. Vonnegut presents war as it is, using his own style of

dark comedy and satire sense of humor. But still continuing to show his disgust and distaste of

war and further, forcing the reader to be confronted with how we view war.

In The Things they Carried, Tim O’Brien exposes the inner battles and conflicts soldiers

carry. After being buried in a tunnel, lieutenant Jimmy Cross comes out of the tunnel and one of

his men is shot and killed, “He felt shame. He hated himself. He had loved Martha more than his

men, and as a consequence Lavender was now dead, and this was something he would have to

carry like a stone in his stomach for the rest of the war” (O’Brien 9). The text tells the actualities

of war, from the battlefield to the mental and emotional wounds that scar so many veterans. The

raw and unfiltered thoughts bring a frightening and new reality to the reader. The lieutenant lives

with the guilt and regrets of his every move and actions. War puts common people who deserve

to have a happy ending love story into life or death situations. And unfortunately as human

beings, we are not wired to be a loaded weapon, war puts so many people in unfair and
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undeserved positions. Similar, O’Brien puts us in the shoes of a soldier, “there were times of

panic… and covered their heads and said Dear Jesus and flopped around on the earth and fired

their weapons blindly and cringed and sobbed and begged for the noise to stop and went wild

and made stupid promises to themselves and to God and to their mothers and fathers, hoping not

to die. In different ways, it happened to all of them” (O’Brien 10). O’Brien paints a picture of the

true, authentic and most vulnerable moments, so many soldiers are faced with. The fear of dying

and seeing those around you die. This is one of the most powerful texts a person could read, the

undeniable emotions a reader feels when absorbing this story. The author doesn’t sugar coat the

terrors soldiers see, along with the damages of war.

In both texts, Vonnegut and O’Brien prove and easily persuade the reader as to why war

is so detrimental. They tell the stories of so many people who are afraid and haunted with the

effects of war every day. They put the average person in the place of another and put opinions

aside, showing the alarming facts. Both texts effectively and uniquely fulfill the genre of a war

story.
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Works Cited

Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five (New York: Bantam, 1998). Vonnegut, Kurt.

Slaughterhouse-Five. New York: Bantam, 1998.

O'Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. Houghton Mifflin (Trade), 2009.