Faust Thesis

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Faust, Drew Gilpin. The epublic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War. New York: Random House Inc., 2008 Thesis: Faust argues that American 's "life and culture" during and after the Civil War were forever changed by their forced reactions to the massive death that occurred because of the war (xviii). Themes: While each chapter acts as its own separate theme for the text, there are themes inside of the chapters that are apparent as the reader works their way through the text. One of these themes is identity. Many soldiers identified as Christians and that Christianity was challenged when they were forced to kill enemies and faith was shaken by the overwhelming cruelty and death. In response to this, there were soldiers that would dress as Native Americans, people whom they viewed as savage, before/after killing, because they could then identify with their more savage side (37). Another …show more content…

Because of its ' personal nature, there are a lot of memoirs, journals, and diaries used for this text; examples of them include ...War Memoirs of an Army Chaplain, Journal of Kate Stone, Journal of a Confederate Soldier, ...Memoirs of Chaplain Life. She also uses many letters for her text such as the War Letters of Louise-Hippolyte Gache, ...Letters from Georgia Soldiers in the Civil War, ...Letters from African American Soldiers in the Union Army, and ...The Civil War Letters of George E. Stevens. Faust also used a number of illustrative sources such as Gardner 's Photographic Sketchbook of the War and Frank Leslie 's Illustrated Newspaper. This was one of the first major events (if not the first) where illustrations/photographs were taken. She also uses a variety of magazines and Newspapers from that era: Christian Recorder, Harper 's Weekly, and the New York Times just to name a few. With the usage of newspapers and personal papers, Faust is also able to utilize wills and

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