SECTION 17

And then she’ll just sit and listen while he says he cannot get it out of his head, about how if he had caught that fucking sniper, that enemy sniper he’d been trying to get, that’d been following them around, terrorizing their unit, if he’d have managed to kill him like he was supposed to, then the sniper wouldn’t have gotten off the shot that killed his buddy.

-This is an example of a causal claim and almost a proposal claim. Caleb states that if he was able to do something different in the situation than the effects of what had happened while he was in the war would be drastically different. The proposal claim is evident in the fact that he also trying to convince himself that if his actions were different then he wouldn’t be having a “bad time.”

six years after Caleb’s service ended

-It’s a small but overall still a factual claim because Caleb’s service ended without a doubt.

“Of course, he’s too cranky to be happy about anything, and he’ll be mad because Katie won’t eat it because I spent all day makin’ it and the only thing she wants to eat right now is pancakes.”

-This is an example of a Factual claim because of the relationship between Katie not wanting to eat will effectively make Caleb upset. Theres a correlation between her actions and how it can interrupt his emotions.

These are supposed to be her easy months, she sighs, April and May and June, before the anniversaries of his worst firefights—many of them in Ramadi; a lot of bad things happened in Ramadi—exacerbate his flashbacks and nightmares. That’s usually September through January, the “really bad” months

-This is an example of a comparative claim. It reflects the months in which Caleb’s PTSD usually peaks in settles. In this case, during the spring, Caleb’s PTSD is calm because his memories do not correlate during this time, so the war isn’t as prevalent in his life compared to the months in the fall. In comparison, he was a harder time during the fall month because this was the time he was in the war.