The 2nd Platoon

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War, a book resulted from the trips of Sebastian Junger to the Korengal Valley during the Afghanistan war. Going as a correspondent for a magazine, joining the 2nd platoon, not as a soldier, as a journalist, but then reaching to a point in which he was considered as one more member of the 2nd Platoon. Immersing himself and immersing the reader into this world that could even seem unreal for the reader. Rather than getting into the politics and strategies of the war in Afghanistan, Junger’s main focus is to describe the journey of the members of the 2nd platoon from different perspectives, but, sometimes losing himself in his sea of words.
War is divided in three main sections or sub books if it can be called in that way; Fear, Killing, and …show more content…
Another example is, when one of the members of the platoon, back in the U.S. is asked if he had killed someone in combat, the response was “We don’t like to talk about that” (180) . Throughout the book, we can find spurs of moments like this, which Junger seems to try to not force on the soldiers, but whenever this conversations happen, they start and then end at exact same moment. All these moments are the ones that in one side, could be building suspense, or not giving that much detail in order to trap the reader into trying to find more about them. But, this doesn’t seem to be the case, in this book. Which seems to be Filkins main criticism of his review of the book, “There’s too much telling, not enough showing. The result is that for all its closeness to the men in the field, “War” lacks the emotional power it might have had if its characters had been described in more depth” . Coming to agree with Filkins’ statement, as a reader, I felt that the characters emotions and feelings could have been presented in more in deep, which would have left a bigger mark on the

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