Casualties of War

Tear-jerking, poignant, and real. These words vividly describe this feature. Casualties of War is a different feature from what we have read in that it doesn't have a positive resolution or ending. It doesn't conclude with uplifting closure. It is real. Real in the sense that it describes the pain and life changing effects of losing a loved one. Grief is real. It can completely overcome you, cloak you with such a heavy blanket of sorrow that daylight is invisible. You can't sugar coat it. It's not ok. You won't be ok and yet... life goes on. You can may come out of impossible grief and become a stronger person or you may succumb to it. Somehow though, you have to stay connected to the memory of the one you lost and keep them deeply and ever present in your heart.

This article follows the story of an average family, living a normal life as they deal with the death of their son, who was killed in Iraq. I think the author wants to pull the reader in with the "everyman" kind of family this is and how the men we have lost in this war are regular guys who aspired to a greatness beyond ordinariness.

The author also has a style of paying attention to details and using description to paint a vivid picture of what life was like for Chris, the young marine killed in Iraq. She doesn't sugar-coat his life, dwells on the difficult aspects as well as the positive ones, and by the end of the feature the reader feels as though we know him. The author endears him to us with his faulty grammar, collection of tattoos, choice of music, girlfriends, and down to the magazine choices he selected before being deployed, we start to feel a connection. Emotion is evoked and even though we know by the title that he will be killed in combat, we still tear up when we read of it actually occurring.

While the feature is sad and depressing, it's very realness inspires a feeling of hope and optimism. Paradoxically, hope is intermingled with grief. The last sentence could leave us with a feeling of hopelessness, as his parents comment on how they view the future as nothing to look towards. "ahead for us is nothing. It's just a hole." However hopeless this last sentence is, we still feel a slight bit of hope when we think back to the life Chris lived. I think this is why the author spent such a substantial portion of time writing and describing his life, in all the mundane details, in order for us to realize that it isn't ok. Nothing about someone dying is good, and yet for those still living somehow life has to go on