In the novel "Slaughterhouse-Five" by Kurt Vonegut, and the short story “Speaking of Courage,” by Tim O’Brien, the use of metafiction is found. In Slaughterhouse Five, a young adult named Billy Pilgrim travels through time to different events in his life. He also has multiple encounters with an alien species called Tralfamadorians. These aliens explain to Billy the concept of the space time continuum, and how there is no past or future. Throughout the novel, the author Kurt Vonegut randomly throws himself into the text, describing how he has actually experienced the things that happen in the novel during his own time serving in World War II. In the short story “Speaking of Courage” a war veteran named Norman Bowker struggles with coping with not being able to save a good friend named Kiowa during the Vietnam War. During the story Norman Bowker drives around a lake in his home town for hours and hours on end. As he drives he is constantly thinking to himself about what he would say when he told his war story. In the end of the story the author, Tim O’Brien who was in the war with Norman Bowker, shares some of the letters exchanged between the two of them. In both Slaughterhouse Five and “Speaking of Courage” both of the authors insert their own war experiences into their texts in order to tell their stories and relieve themselves of their own pent up emotions caused by their time in war. Throughout all of Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut will repeatedly enter himself in the text to remind the reader that he has experienced the things he writes about. In the first chapter, before the story of Billy Pilgrim begins, Kurt Vonnegut states that his book is “so short and jumbled and jangled because there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. Everyone is supposed to be dead” (24). Vonnegut’s experience of the bombing of Dresden compels him to say this because he wants the reader to know what emotions he feels. W