Kempner's Rhetorical Techniques During The Vietnam War

Kempner presents many stylistic and rhetorical techniques to show his thoughts about the Vietnam War. He uses vivid imagery to show the awful things he saw and experienced in his time there. He has a very negative tone throughout the whole letter and uses sarcasm intended to provoke unfavorable thoughts and opinions about the war. Kempner also utilizes a variety of different types and lengths of sentences.

The graphic imagery Kempner uses to describe the scene is gruesome. He tells us of the “impenetrable jungle and saw grass and ants, and screwed up radios and. . . no chow, and. . . blisters and torn trousers and jungle rot, and wet socks and sprained ankles and no heels, and. . .” This description shows the unbearable hardships of the war and helps the reader really get into the letter. It helps build a bond between the reader and the writer, and helps him/her see what Kempner saw.

The clear negative tone of his writing gives readers the same, or a similar viewpoint as Kempner. He uses words with negative connotations like “abortion”(3), “hard road”(10), and “driving rainstorm”(26). He clearly sees the war as an unbearable misfortune in which he had the most lurid
In the first paragraph, it’s almost one huge, long paragraph intended to exhaust the reader in his/her reading, just like it did Kempner to actually be there. In paragraph two, he inserts the short, seven-word sentence, “So goes about $50,000 worth of ammo.” He does this to make it different and to draw attention to it. He could have put it into the sentence right before it, but he puts it by itself to make a point and show how wasteful it was. He includes sentences that have five words all the way up to ones that have ninety-four words along with simple and compound-complex sentences that draw your attention and make you follow