Pulled Off The Most Audacious Rescue In History

Argo: How the CIA and Hollywood Pulled Off the Most Audacious Rescue in History, the historical nonfiction book written by Antonio Mendez and Matt Baglio, brings the reader into the world of deception and espionage. As he describes the events behind the CIA’s pursuit to rescue hostages from Iranian captivity, Mendez utilizes a first-person narrative that helps present the story as historical nonfiction. During the event of the security check at the airport, Mendez’s usage of past tense language must remain in the story to sound historical; however, his personal diction and limited selection of detail develops a genuinely inhibited and professional tone, which would have to change for the section to become dramatized as historical fiction. In order to present the scene as historical fiction, certain aspects of Mendez’s diction, like the use of past tense, must stay the same, while other qualities, like personal statements that formulate a recollecting tone, must change. On the morning of the escape, in which the disguised group must pass through security checks without breaking cover, Mendez uses words such as “saw…turned…approached…went smoothly” (Mendez and Balgio 268). The
During one of the more intense events, Mendez describes the nerve-wrecking experience of the incognito team having to proceed through multiple security checks. In order to present the event as historical fiction instead of an actual account, Mendez must keep his original, past tense language when describing the security check process, but he would need to change his personal diction and limited selection of detail due to their natural roles in forming the legitimate and real-life