Within the text, O'Brien often comments on his own writing. Why does he do this? How these commentaries help clarify his purpose for writing this text?

O'Brien constantly questions what it is to be a writer, a teller of war stories. He worries about honesty, about what happened as opposed to what makes a good, true story. His daughter, Kathleen, implores him to give up the topic of the war, to find something else to fixate on. She wants him to find a happy story. But O'Brien thinks that stories have the power to help people escape from repeating the past. Or at the very least to ease his own troubled conscience.