On War and Redemption

This study guide will help you analyze the text “On War and Redemption” by Timothy Kudo. We will show you examples of elements in the text that will be relevant for your analysis. In these notes, we will focus on the summary, composition, and writer’s intention.

Presentation of the text

Title: “On War and Redemption”
Author: Timothy Kudo
Genre: Article
Year of publication: 2011

Timothy Kudo is an American Marine captain who served both in Iraq and Afghanistan between 2009 and 2011. After his return to the States, he has written several opinion articles on the war on terrorism for American publications like The Washington Post or The New York Times. “On War and Redemption” was published in the opinion section of The New York Times, on November 8, 2011.

Excerpt

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In the main body, Kudo develops his argumentation through a personal story, but he uses both hidden and open argumentation. An example of hidden argumentation is when he talks about the impact war has on those back home: “When an officer went to the house to check on one family, the littlest one told him matter-of-factly, 'My daddy is dead.' ”

Examples of open argumentation are when the author directly expresses his opinion on war and feelings of guilt that soldiers experience: “The insanity of war means that incidents like this are accepted. By the standards of those who fight wars we did the right thing. The catastrophe is that these incidents occur on an industrial scale.”