2/10/16
This is an AP Comp rhetorical analysis essay. On the exam you will see three
essays/FRQ’s in this order (probably): a synthesis, a rhetorical analysis (like this one); and an
open/argument question. For those three questions you will have 120 minutes, so the standard time
budget for this essay is 40 minutes. Try to stick to that schedule today. You may take more, but if you do it
becomes a less accurate practice. This will be discussed and credited but not directly scored, so your best
practice process is to treat it as an authentic AP Exam essay. ANSWER THE QUESTION! From this point
forward, the text is exactly as it occurred on the exam in 2006.
Carefully read the following letter by 2nd Lt. Marion “Sandy” Kempner reporting his experiences in
Vietnam. Write an essay analyzing the rhetorical strategies the writer uses, and evaluate whether this
letter qualifies as a protest.
2 September 1966
Dear Mom, Dad, Shrub, the Egg and Peach:
Sorry to be so long in writing, but I have just come back from an abortion called Operation Jackson. I spent a
three-day "walk in the sun" (and paddies and fields and mountains and impenetrable jungle and saw grass and
ants, and screwed-up radios and no word, and deaf radio operators, and no chow, and too many C-rations, and
blisters and torn trousers and jungle rot, and wet socks and sprained ankles and no heels, and, and, and) for a
battalion that walked on roads and dikes the whole way and a regiment that didn't even know where the battalion
was, finished off by a 14,000-meter forced march on a hard road.
My God, the epic poems I could write to that ambrosia of Marine Corps cuisine - peanut butter and/or hot coffee
after three days of that! The only person in the battalion to see a VC was, of course, me. I was walking along a
trail doing a village sweep and alone, and here comes Charlie, rifle in hand, with not a care in the world until he
sees me, and then it's a race to see if he can get off the road before I can draw my .45 and get off an accurate shot
(he won). Of course, there was an incident when four snipers took on the battalion, which promptly, more to
release the weight of all that unexpended ammunition than anything else, threw everything at them but the
Missouri; and that would have been there too, except it could not get up that Sang Tra Bong.* So goes about
$50,000 worth of ammo. They probably played it up as a second Iwo Jima at home, but it wasn't.
Then two days after we got back, we played Indian Scout, and my platoon splashed its way through a rice paddy
at 3:30 in the morning in a rainstorm to surround a hamlet*, which we managed to do somehow without alerting
everyone in the district, which is surprising as we made enough noise to wake up a Marine sentry. It was "very
successful" since we managed to kill a few probably innocent civilians, found a few caves and burned a few
houses, all in a driving rainstorm. There's nothing much more, I'm afraid.
Love,
Sandy
* Sang Tra Bong: a tributary of the Mekong river, used as a supply route into the interior of Vietnam
* Hamlet: a small rural village
Sandy Kempner was killed in action on 11 November, 1966.