Reading Journal 3
Rebecca
3/31/10
Pages 79-121
I Am a Soldier, Too
By: Rick Bragg
“Both Lori and Jessi were unconscious when they were dropped off at the military hospital around 10 a.m. by Iraqi soldiers. Lori had suffered a serious head wound. The Iraqi doctors said that they tried to save her, but that brain surgery in the opening days of the war, as their emergency rooms filled with wounded, was impossible. She died before Jessi came to.” (Bragg 81). Lori and Jessi had met because they were roommates at their base and they became good friends. Lori was all Jessi had while in the army and now she has lost her.
“Long after the army’s messenger had left, they could still hear him. “Your daughter is missing in action. Her whereabouts are unknown. She was last seen…” (Bragg 85). Greg, Dee and Brandi, Jessi’s dad, mom and sister, could not bare the thought of Jessi being gone. They thought she couldn’t be dead because she was a supply clerk. However, they did not know where she was or if she was okay. Brandi did not feel anything and could not concentrate: “I tried reading books. I would read the same line over and over again. I’d read romance novels and there was no romance in it,” she said. “It just didn’t interest me. I’d watch television and not see it. I was just there.” Also, Jessi’s mother cried all day and could not sleep. Dee did not know what day it was because it all just ran together. Greg and Dee hoped Jessi had found a place where she would be safe while she waited. They could see her sick and injured but they knew she was alive. Jessi’s family could not bare the thought of her being dead.
I really like these passages that you chose to write about. I remember you mentioning in group how it was confusing that Lori was dead, yet they said that she was just MIA. I think it’s because they had no body or evidence to prove that she was actually dead. Instead, they just assumed that she was MIA and hoped that she would be found eventually.
| Posted 1 year, 10 months agoThe passages you chose to discuss were definately the best ones out of the chapters we read. I truly like these passages that you chose and they were easily the best ones I know of in chapters nine through fourteen.
| Posted 1 year, 10 months ago