Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War by Mary Roach – Anna Terese Aucoin
In the passage from Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War, the author, Mary Roach, argues that those who develop and test military technologies and innovations are equally, if not more, deserving of recognition for their accomplishments as combatants and front-line fighters. She does so by first using a surprising example of a military “weapon,” the chicken gun, which is used to save lives, a feat accomplished thanks to the brilliant minds behind the contraption rather than any combatant on the front line. Additionally, Roach asserts that Medal of Honor winners and combatants have already received generous amounts of recognition for their accomplishments, while …show more content…
She does so first by distinguishing that only other mourners can even begin to recognize the expression of grief in others, displaying its isolating effects as no one else, but the select grievers themselves, can even be aware of others’ grief. Additionally, Didion describes the resulting expression of grief, itself, with isolating and vulnerable diction, using words such as “naked,” “invisible,” “lost,” and “incorporeal.” Didion compares her grief to the images of the dividing rivers of life and death, the Styx and the Lethe, so completely and utterly estranged from the rest of the living. These words and images create an ominous, isolating tone which furthermore displays the isolation incurred by grief. Continuing, Didion expresses how this isolation makes the grief unbearable to its mourners, as she alludes to the practice of suttee in which living wives would throw themselves on top of their dead husbands burning funeral rafts, she argues, not out of tradition, but as “an accurate representation” of the wives’ anguished mental state due to their grief. Lastly, Didion refers to a poem “Rose Aylmer” which so elegantly sums up Didion’s emotions that were at the time so inundated with grief, as her “[wanting] to scream… [wanting] him back.” Through her distinction, diction, tone, and