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The Long Way Home Analysis

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The Long Way home was written by David Laskin, a passionate reader who graduated from Harvard College in 1975 with a degree in literature and history. Laskin in recent years has been writing about non-fiction events in which people are thrown into situations they cannot control, such as war, horrific weather, and genocide. In The Long Way Home, Laskin did not hold back details from the reader. His focus on the details are what made the monograph so impactful, and with that, they give the reader a very good sense of what these individuals in past-time hardships had to deal with. The horrors of the immigration boats, coming to an America that was nothing like they were told it was, and the unimaginable mental destruction of war; All of these …show more content…

The same year Meyer had also been enlisted just only five years after coming to America. Meyer’s experience on the front lines began when he was called in as a replacement for a man who bled too much to keep fighting. He was now part of America’s big offensive. His first night of active combat consisted of old trenches and bomb shell torn land. “There was little German resistance… There was no other sign of life” (pg. 250). That night there was harsh rains and no fires could be built. He spent the night cold and wet, but he was alive. Epifanio’s army life came differently in a sense. His division early on in the summer had joined with British Forces. His fellow comrades kept talking about how the front lines weren’t so bad unless you were at Ypres. Turns out that’s exactly where they ended up. Laskin quotes a soldier “’I can’t describe the awfulness of war’… ‘As most men say, it is not war, it is slaughter.’ ‘Don’t go near Ypres’” (pg. 230). Epifanio had it rough; He was amongst the toughest lines of battle known amongst men at the time, and every combat soldier that thought they wouldn’t see action, did not get off easily in the autumn of 1918. Both men experienced hell, and while they were on different fronts, they both shared a life known as a soldier’s

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