War, being the controversial and horrid event that it is, is quite a tough topic to write about fluently. Only a few things can give you an advantage while writing about war, one of which Louisa May Alcott possessed, she had her own experiences in war as a Civil War nurse. Using her experience, she can write a first hand story describing the scene at the deathbed of a Civil War Soldier. She gets her readers emotionally involved in this narrative from Hospital Sketches using her nostalgic
Throughout this excerpt, Alcott’s choice of words draws the reader in emotionally using diction
that tugs at the heartstrings, and induces a sympathetic response. War, as a topic standing alone, has the ability to bring out such responses, but the way Alcott uses her own first hand experiences in this account, really makes a reader feel for the tragedies of war. Louisa May Alcott uses patriotic terms such as “Liberty” and “Justice” to invoke the hidden love of your country. She describes the time that the soldier is going though as the “hard hour” which is a quite useful euphemism for death. Alcott uses her wide vocabulary to enlighten us with her own accounts of a grim situation n out nation’s history.
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