Four - On the Rainy River

The fourth chapter offers one particularly handy literary device that is used pretty consistently throughout all mediums of entertainment: the flashback. I think that the reason why O'Brien elects not to start with this chapter is simply because it's far more exciting as a reader to be thrown into a story in media res than to start with backstory, develop it, and then around chapter 15 or so, start having interesting things happen. I think it's just much harder to keep a reader interested in a story if you actually do start at the beginning, as it's generally all talk and no action when one is first starting out. However, I think O'brien uses this and other flashbacks for the opposite effect as well; it helps to chop up the war scenes and hold back on the action. By throwing in a few brief stories from before and after the war, the author is able to restrain the pace of the story. I for one can only handle so many war stories about mangled children and detonated puppies before I just start to feel ill, so really it's kind of a relief to have a nice story about fishing on a river and the like every couple of chapters. Also, by chopping up the war sections into smaller chunks, he adds to the chaotic nature of his writing, which seems to emulate his feelings of the war itself: through most of it, he was pretty confused, not entirely sure what he was fighting for or what the war was even about, and this hectic style reflects the nature of war itself. We might try to disguise it with orderly marching and dry-cleaned uniforms but deep down, the true nature of war is Madness.

This is madness.
300 also includes war and flashbacks, and is therefore applicable.