Tom Brokaw’s The Greatest Generation

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Tom Brokaw’s The Greatest Generation

In Tom Brokaw’s book, The Greatest Generation, the author portrays ordinary people of a certain generation as having qualities of greatness and heroism. He tells stories of average people that lived inspiring lives through many hardships, and declares today’s society as the beneficiary of their challenging work and commitment. Brokaw’s generous and proficient use of imagery helps to persuade the reader to believe that the people of “the greatest generation” are, indeed, heroic. He defines the strength and resilience of “the greatest generation” by what they were able to confront and overcome.

“…when the nation was balanced precariously between the darkness of the Great Depression on one side and the storms of war in Europe and the Pacific on the other…..Once again the American people understood the magnitude of the challenge, the importance of an unparallel national commitment, and, most of all, the certainty that only one resolution was acceptable.”(p3) This quote is from the opening paragraph of the chapter in Brokaw’s book, “The Time of their Lives.” These ordinary people surmounted times of great destitution while courageously facing the epoch of the Great depression. They comprehended the necessity for commitment in order to preserve their independence. Brokaw uses imagery including “the Darkness of the Great depression” to reveal to the reader the severity of their situation. He depicts the Great Depression not just as a time of hardships, but as an era when thousands of men and women starved to death, parents could not provide for themselves or their families and unemployment was so high that a days work would yield, at most, a loaf of stale bread to feed an entire family. Although he does not say these things directly, his use of imagery causes the reader to have these thoughts and to see these images.

“…they were fighting, often hand to hand, in the most primitive conditions possible, across the bloodied landscape of France, Belgium, Italy, Austria. They fought their way up a necklace of South Pacific islands few had ever heard of before and made them a fixed part of American history...and they went to sea on hostile waters far removed from the shores of their homeland.”(pXIX) This quote from the introductory chapter of Brokaw’s book, “Generations,” describes what the heroes of “the greatest generation...

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...tories dedicated to many more heroes of “the greatest generation.” He mentions a man by the name of Jack Hemingway, who parachuted into France behind enemy lines, where he was taken prisoner by the Germans, and a woman named Helen Strauss, who was nominated as New Jersey’s Psychologist of the Year in 1997 for her hard work and dedication to children and low-income families. She was also known as a great woman for her service in the Navy. Brokaw also mentions Bill Mauldin, a writer who “shared with those on the front lines as well as those at home the hard truths and dark humor of life at war.”(p381) With Brokaw’s use of “hard truths,” again, the image of savage fighting appears to the reader. Another picture comes forth in the reader’s mind from Brokaw’s use of “dark humor.” A picture of a bleak and cloudy memories that the soldier’s mask with a sense of humor.

Tom Brokaw’s use of the stylistic element of imagery is one of his many methods of compelling the reader to understand that “the greatest generation” is, undeniably, great. His picturesque approach gives the reader a mental image of the great hardships that these heroes surmounted through their hard work and dedication.

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