"It's against the rules"(O'Brien 107)

Many movies, games, and books rely upon suspense to keep their audience entertained and interested. O'Brien has done an outstanding job of luring the reader into a frame story, and right towards the end, stops. This is a mood killer if you were hearing the story from someone in person, but for a reader, it only increases their will to read on and discover what happens next. It keeps not only the reader entertained, but it also brings out emotion from the characters.

O'Brien the entire book has told us very little of the platoon except the equipment and several names of the men in it. He does, however, develop the men in their own short stories. In this story we see Mitchell Sanders' passion for storytelling. The purpose of this is to make the characters come alive, and when tragedy strikes, we as bystanders can feel sorrow for a loss of the platoon. If O'Brien had just told the characters natures at the beginning, it would have been too much too soon, and the reader would not appreciate the loss of the men as dearly as they do when the learn of the men's nature through out the book.