An American
soldier, currently in the battlefield of Iraq War, sends an email to his family
and friends to display the immense disgust he has for the status quo. With
informal diction and sarcastic, pessimistic tone, he describes how his current
situation is like, which even essential factors of living are infringed. He
uses both personal and limited-omniscient view to guide the readers to a “mental
voyage” to the soldier’s place in Iraq.
The author depicts
the standard of accommodation through visual imagery. He describes how to pitch
a tent, he even gives the exact size in inches and what to put inside. The
soldier shows negative attitude toward the horrible life in tent by using
sarcasm and allusion. From the sentence “Tear down the three walls of your tent
seen from the street and you have about as much privacy as I have”, he
sarcastically criticizes his privacy being violated. He alludes to Wal-Mart in
order to emphasize that the soldiers have to be prepared for everything they
need for four months because there is no way to satisfy their necessities.
He much appeals to
senses such as auditory and olfactory to gain sympathy from his family and friends.
With colloquial terms, he delivers how horrible the life is there with nine
tent mates. Speaking figuratively, he compares his tent to a kennel full of
pugs. He shows strong disgust to the smell, snoring, and social graces of the
tent mates, and the fact that he has to be quiet with a flashlight in his hand
due to more than half of the members sleeping most of the time.
In the last part
of the email, the soldier guides the readers to deliver the instructions when
going to bathroom. He sarcastically alludes the way going to the bathroom to “time
for hygiene” to effectively tell how it is like to go over thousand-foot trudge
over loose gravel through a frozen rock garden. He instructs the readers to
provide thermals and jacket themselves to protect them from “freaking cold”
weather there. He also uses a class dialect of soldiers such as “john”, “0400”
and “latrine” to realistically convey his emotions after using the bathroom.
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