Is O'Brien a True Historian

In O’Brien’s “The Man I Killed” he spoke a lot about what the man looked like and how the bullet holes affected his looks. These sections are historic but when he goes on to talk about what the man he killed used to feel and how he was raised, he has no idea. He is just saying what he thought happened, there is no was to see if that was the truth. He is just speculating. It is a fact that “the man’s head was wrenched sideways” (142). Because others could have seen it, but that the man killed loved mathematics is not a fact.
If O’Brien is supposed to be a historian he needs to stick to more facts and less feelings. I think that Davidson and Lytle would have a problem with calling O’Brien a historian. They would feel that he doesn't stick to the story enough. Also, in the end of “Good Forum” by O’Brien, he states that he would tell his daughter that he didn’t kill anyone when he wrote other stories about killing someone. Historians are supposed to tell the whole truth and let the reader see the facts and grow their own opinions. In their essay “When Trouble Comes”, Davidson and Lytle write that “like novels and plays, films strive for an artistic standard of ‘truth’”, so too O’Brien’s stories are changed by his own feelings and thoughts, they are a form of the truth but they aren’t fully truthful. So I think that Davidson and Lytle would view O’Brien’s stories as entertainment but not history, due to all of the opinions in the text.