Picture This

For my choice memoir, I have decided to read American Sniper by Chris Kyle. This book, by far, is engaging, inspiring, surprising and has become one of my non-fiction favorites. To the left, you will see a symbol that I drew (I know, right?!) that went along with my book. It might confuse you, and I don't blame you, but throughout the post, I will explain exactly what it stands for to the point where it will be like you read the book. (But, like, you should. Read the book I mean.)

Some background first: Chris Kyle is a Navy SEAL who has been in Iraq for more than 2 years while married to his wife, Taya. Back home, Chris has two kids, a son and a daughter, both of which he hasn't been there for. His kids don't know him very well, and that really bothers Taya, explained through excerpts of the book where she has a say. The long separation has put a strain on Chris and Taya's marriage.

So let's go back to my picture. There is a brick wall, labeled "Resentment", two doves connected by wedding rings, and two clouds with the letters "Ten" and "sion" put together to make the full word "Tension". There is one particular paragraph from the book that talks about how resentment had built up between the two of them and how the tension is growing as well. The doves are meant to symbolism their marriage. In my picture, I drew the clouds overlapping their wings just a little bit to show how the tension is slowly starting to envelope their marriage. I also drew the wall unfinished to represent that the wall won't stop growing taller until the two figure out how to fix the growing resentment between them. Here's the quote from my book that gave me the idea to draw this picture:

"A lot of resentment had built up between us. Ironically, we didn't actually fight all that much, but there was always a lot of tension. Each of us would put in just enough effort to be able to say we were trying -- and imply that the other person was not" (Kyle 320).

This quote, among many others in the book, supports the main conflict of the family tension. Kyle doesn't talk about many relationships in the book but his relationship with Taya is one of the few he brings up constantly to not only keep the book moving along, but also to keep the book more interesting. Part of Chris Kyle's goal in writing the book is to show the strains war puts on relationships like marriage and with only twenty-five pages left to go in the book, I can say that Kyle is doing a wonderful job at explaining those strains. I feel so much more knowledgeable about war and more empathetic towards returning veterans, their families, and everything they've had to go through in between to be reunited.