Rhetorical Analysis Of James Bradley's 'Flags Of Our Fathers'

In the book, Flags of our Fathers, written by James Bradley, Bradley writes with pride about his father and the five other men who raised the American Flag on the Japanese island of Iwo Jima. Throughout the book, Bradley utilizes rhetorical questions, stories, interviews, and letters to create a more personal feeling to the book. Also, this builds ethos, making his book credible due to his sources. He creates a dramatic tone by employing short sentence structure and repetition throughout. Furthermore, Bradley also indicates strong feelings towards two major themes of the book, which are pride in his country and a contempt for the media during wartime. Despite this book being nonfiction, it is clear that Bradley looks to create suspense and engage the audience using short sentence structure and anecdotes about his father and the other five men. For example, in chapter 5, page 20, Bradley writes, “December 1944. The last Christmas for too many young boys. Then off for the forty-day sail to Iwo Jima.” This excerpt contributes to Bradley’s dramatic tone as he talks about young men going off to battle, many not returning to see their families. He foreshadows what drama/horror is to come in the war and in the following chapter of the book. Later, on page 124, Bradley begins a paragraph with, “Leo was lucky to be alive.” Bradley, throughout the novel, continues to use short sentence structure in order to highlight important events, building the drama of the book. In the same