Comparison of Finkel and O'Brian - Essay Example

O’Brian in his book “How to Tell a War story” illustrates on events during a war and the art of telling those events. He paints on a vivid picture of war and the effects it has on people involved in it. This makes the story true and very realistic as it drives a point in today’s life because war has become a big part of life in the recent times. Considering the book wrote by Finkel, “The Good Soldiers,” he made art out of the crucial moments in history. His book is the most honest, agonizing, and vividly made accounts of the current war.

It captures the horror nature of war. It actually reveals the fact about war and explains what happened in real life. According to the story Finkel tells about war, being a journalist who is supposed to report on facts, I truly think that he is actually telling the truth in his story. According to what he explains in the book, he witnessed and in reality interacted with the victims who were involved in the war, the soldiers. He wrote the story from the stories he was told by the victims concerning what they experienced during the struggle.

This shows clearly that Finkel did not make up the story as a fiction but was a fact that happened in reality.  O’Brian described that a true war story is never moral. He explained that a true war story does not instruct or even encourage virtues. .   Finkel as a journalist witnessed the 2-16 battalion because he spent eight months with the solders who were involved in the war. The soldiers therefore told him what they experienced in the war struggles and how they lost some of their fellows and some being wounded.

From these stories, Finkel managed to write the real experience of war expressing the pain, sorrow, death and destruction as they were experienced by the soldiers. This is also clear evidence that the story is very true.  Finkel described the horrible situation of war which ended in death and destruction. When he was writing the book, he got some stories and ideas from the soldiers who at first thought that he had ill motives with the book. His main idea was to use the book to write about the battalion experience of infantry soldiers and character in the lost moment during the Iraq war.

He expresses all his opinions and feelings about war in the story. The story is really explains real; facts about war. Finkel is very realistic in his story because during the events, he was present and witnessed the situation having coming into contact with the soldiers, “Here came the explosion. It came through the door…. It came through the good soldiers.” He made clear facts that the soldiers were wounded in the war. He further described war as hell due to the fact that decent men were sent to fights where they were wounded and killed creating a lot of fear and grief.

“The battalion chaplain was in search of a quick business in soldiers wishing to unburden their grief, fear and desperation.” O’Brian in the chapter “How to Tell a War Story” also illustrates how young and innocent men are s-end in fights where they later suffer