Riches of Mason

The Lone Survivor is still proving to be one of the best books I may ever read. It is engaging, funny, and inspiring. Every sentence I read from this book makes me want to get up from our spoiled lives and help our country. In this way, the book is very similar to John F. Kennedy's speech. It makes the listener, or in this case the reader, want to help their country and achieve patriotic feelings. This is done very well because of the way Luttrell describes his mission. When Luttrell is in a dire situation of thirst, he states, "I was breaking the thinnest tree branches off and sucking them for liquid. I sucked at the grass when I found some, hoping for a few drops of mountain dew. I even tried to wring out my socks to find just a taste of water" (Luttrell 260). This passage from the text is engaging because of the way Luttrell explains it. It's almost like a story. The passage is also inspiring because it makes the reader not only guilty of what we take for granted, but also what there is to do for our country. The sentences provoke the audience to simply stand up, walk to the nearest Naval Academy, say "I want to join the forces".

When I read books, I learn at least one thing. Last night, while reading my book, I realized how lucky we really are to be living in Mason--with food, water, shelter, and blankets. Luttrell's depiction of the land he fought on is simply devastating and downright scary. He is in a position where he is being hunted down, with no water, no food, and little shelter. It makes me sick about what I do everyday-- Wake up, eat, play, eat, sleep. I realized that what we take for granted, others take for undeserved riches.

This page shows where Operation Red Wings was held.

An Engaging Read

The Lone Survivor is amazing! The book is extremely engaging and fun to read. I wanted to discover why the book was so engaging so I looked further into the syntactical techniques used by Luttrell to convey the specific meaning. I found that Luttrell uses varied sentence length to make his book such a great read. When Luttrell describes the position of the enemy, he says,"Right now we were not hemmed in on our flanks; our enemy was dead ahead. That, and straight up. Overhead. And that's bad" (Luttrell 224). The quote begins with a medium-long sentence and ends with a short, 3 word sentence. This change in sentence length makes the tone of the piece a little more serious. This in turn makes the reader want to keep going and find out what will happen. The use of the varied sentence length is what makes the book great, and what makes Luttrell such a great storyteller.



Marcus Luttrell is no ordinary author. Luttrell is an exceptional storyteller. He has experienced the worst, and come out the best. He managed to get through SEAL training, go on a mission, and come back alive to tell the tale. He did this in the form of a book, and Luttrell's voice is what makes this book the great book that it is.

Meeting Someone Like Marcus Luttrell

Yesterday, I met an old friend. I always knew that he had enlisted in the army, but I hadn't been able to talk to him about it. As we were playing tennis together, I suddenly thought of my book. I asked him what army school was like. He told me it was terrible and an absolute living hell, but it made you fit. I couldn't help thinking about the way Marcus Luttrell described BUD/S training. Luttrell states, when describing the showers in the Training Camp, that "They were showers, okay, but not in the accepted, civilized sense. They were a whole lot closer to a... carwash and were known as the decontamination unit" (Luttrell 83). Luttrell's description of a training camp is quite similar to that of my friend's. I asked my friend if his training was like the SEALs' training. He told me that what the SEALs go through is much harder than what he has to go through. He told me there are very stressful days where he goes also, and this also made me think of what Luttrell describes as "Hell Week". There are many similarities within the US Armed Forces, one harder than the other.This article describes SEAL training.