EO3: Critical Reading- theshocker69

Caleb has been home since 2006, way more than enough time for Brannan to catch his symptoms.

• The article was written in 2013, so Caleb had been home for 7 years
• Most readers will not look at the date the article was written. This can coerce people to think that he has been home for a much longer time and add to their premise.

The house… is often quiet as a morgue. You can hear the cat padding around. The air conditioner whooshes, a clock ticks.

• Rhetoric
• Added animation to describe the eerie silence in the house.

When a sound erupts—Caleb screaming at Brannan because she’s just woken him up from a nightmare, after making sure she’s at least an arm’s length away in case he wakes up swinging—the ensuing silence seems even denser.

• “Caleb screaming at Brannan because she’s just woken him up from a nightmare“: This quote is used to show the violence of his PTSD and how it affects the family.
• “after making sure she’s at least an arm’s length away in case he wakes up swinging“: snuck in at the end of the sentence to surprise the reader. Obviously, if she has to make sure she is an arm’s length away, there have been times where she hasn’t and has gotten hit by her husband.

Even when everyone’s in the family room watching TV, it’s only connected to Netflix and not to cable, since news is often a trigger.

• News is avoided in the house because of how it affects Caleb
• Another example of how this affects the family
• Goes to show how easily Caleb is set off

Brannan and Caleb can be tense with their own agitation, and tense about each other’s.

• They both have their agitation
• They love each other so they don’t like when the other is agitated
• Twice the amount of agitation

Their German shepherd, a service dog trained to help veterans with PTSD, is ready to alert Caleb to triggers by barking, or to calm him by jumping onto his chest.

• Caleb has a therapy dog
• This shows the severity of his PTSD
• “try to calm him by jumping onto his chest” his dog is used in public. This tells us that Caleb gets very anxious, very often, when he leaves his house.

This PTSD picture is worse than some, but much better, Brannan knows, than those that have devolved into drug addiction and rehab stints and relapses.

• Caleb is not on drugs
• Drug use is not a valid excuse for his behavior now
• Caleb has it easier (although not easy) than other soldiers

She has not, unlike military wives she advises, ever been beat up.

• Caleb has not ever beat her (intentionally? Think back to waking him up)

Nor jumped out of her own bed when she got touched in the middle of the night for fear of being raped, again. Still.

• Brannan has not been raped by her husband either
• This enforces the claim that his PTSD is much better than some other cases

“Sometimes I can’t do the laundry… And it’s not like, ‘Oh, I’m too tired to do the laundry,’ it’s like, ‘Um, I don’t understand how to turn the washing machine on.’ I am looking at a washing machine and a pile of laundry and my brain is literally overwhelmed by trying to figure out how to reconcile them.”

• Not necessarily a symptom of PTSD
• Shows many common emotions a human may feel, especially when in such a stressful environment.
• PTSD may be being confused with stress, anxiety, or malaise.

She sounds like she might start crying, not because she is, but because that’s how she always sounds, like she’s talking from the top of a clenched throat, tonally shaky and thin.

• Again, her sadness does not necessarily mean PTSD
• Appealing to common feelings and emotions

She looks relaxed for the moment, though, the sun shining through the windows onto her face in this lovely leafy suburb. We raise the blinds in the afternoons, but only if we are alone.

• The blinds are open when Caleb is not home
• Objects outside window must be a trigger
• If someone walks outside of window, must affect Caleb poorly.

When we hear Caleb pulling back in the driveway, we jump up and grab their strings, plunging the living room back into its usual necessary darkness.

• Strengthens previous sentence
• Their entire family lives in darkness while Caleb is home
• Lack of sunshine can cause subconscious depression
  • This may be affecting the family member’s

 

This entire article seems to follow a very large post-hoc fallacy.