Oral History In World War Z By Max Brooks

World War Z, written by Max Brooks, is an apocalyptic novel that follows an interviewer on a quest to piece together the global history twelve years after the zombie apocalypse that came to be know as “The Dark Years”. This novel is said to be an “oral history” because the plot is structured around the personal experiences around the world that is documented by an agent of the United Nations Postwar Commission. For the majority, oral histories are seen as beneficial because they allow for a unique perspective in historical records that readers do not usually get a sense of in a basic textbook. In order for one to understand its critical influence in this novel and its plot structure, it is important for readers to fully grasp what exactly

This important for this particular novel because the histories displayed throughout the novel creates the plot. The stories are ordered in a very particular fashion so that even though the memories are through a particular perspective, readers with no prior knowledge of events are still able to piece together how this zombie disease progressed from start to finish. What also aids in the significance of these stories is the fact that they are not specific to any portion of the world, but are gathered globally. By doing this, Max Brooks was able to implement his opinions of social, political, religious, and environmental issues he has with the the world currently by placing them against the devastating struggles the apocalypse brings and the changes it brought in regards to the issues listed above. In order to get readers to look at themselves objectively, Brooks often had a native from a certain country speak on those issues because if it is one of your own talking about the problems that your nation has, you are more likely to listen then if it were an outsider. The downside to depending on oral histories to get a well rounded sequence of events is that we are depending solely on human memory which can create many inherent problems. An article titled “What is Oral History had this to say about the subject: “Oral history is a maddeningly, imprecise term: it is used to refer to the formal, rehearsed accounts of the past presented by a culturally sanctioned tradition-bearers... informal conversations about “the old days” among friends, neighbors, family members… to recorded interviews deemed to have an important story to