Section 17

“Daddy will be really happy,” she told the German shepherd sitting on her kitchen floor. “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 part is an attributive claim because the author is saying that Brennan said that to her dog.

Later, she reminds me that Lasagna Night can come apart in an instant, if Caleb has a “bad PTSD moment.”

This part is a casual claim because it refers to a cause and effect. The cause would be Caleb having a bad PTSD moment and the effect would be Lasagna Night coming apart.

These are supposed to be her easy months, she sighs, April and May and June, before the anniversaries of his worst firefights

This part is a comparative claim because they referred to the worst of the firefights.

 That’s usually September through January, the “really bad” months, whereas in the spring, she gets a bit of “vacation,” time to clean up the house and catch up on work, rest.

This is another comparative claim because it refers to September through January as “really bad” months comparing that they are worse than the other months.

She used to ask Caleb what was wrong, why he was coiled so tight and poisonous, screaming and yelling at everybody. That just agitated him more. Now, she lets it go, until eventually, after a couple of days or weeks of refusing to leave the house, or refusing to stay home and just disappearing outside, he comes to her. Haven’t you noticed I’m having a bad time? he’ll ask.

This section has two attributive claims because it refers to something Brennan said and then refers to something Caleb had asked. The author is taking their word for it, the author was not actually there.

 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 section has an attributive claim and a casual claim. The attributive claim refers to what Caleb is saying because the author was not there to actually hear him say that. The casual claim refers to the cause of if he had caught the and killed the sniper then the effect would be that his buddy would not be dead.