Korolenko tells his tale of a mob massacre of Jews in 1903 with a view of relaying the horror and injustice of the events in question. He writes from the perspective of a journalist recounting the events after having arrived in town some two months following the massacre. However, he relays the events as they occurred in a first-hand manner, telling the details as though he had been there amongst the crowd. He had gathered his information from interviews with survivors conducted soon after the events and this first-hand approach feels real and credible. He gives a convincing portrait of the madness of crowds and the bloodlust of anti-Semitism. His overarching purpose is to convince the reader of the injustice of the events, and he gathers credibility for his story by telling the story of a man who led the riots, only to repent later and commit suicide. In doing so he suggests that even the crowd knew it was wrong.
Orwell describes taking place in a battle against the...
He tells of the danger of the struggle and also of the excitement. Ultimately his purpose is twofold: (1) to dispel the myth of war's glory, by arguing that he risked his life only to find that the battle was a mere diversion for a larger conflict, and (2) to set the stage for showing in the next chapter of his account of how he came -- through participating in the camaraderie of soldier life, with its emphasis on equality and universal humanity -- to be a socialist.
The accounts reviewed stressed events that the authors wanted to relay in order to achieve their larger purposes. Because those events were relayed skillfully, the authors gained credibility which supported their more interpretative aims. This is, perhaps, a chief reason for writing and reading history. In the end the historian tells as much about himself as he does about his subject and the reader learns about himself as…
