American Sniper

English Wide Reading Assessment Book One

The title says it all. This book is about Chris Kyle, a Navy Seal Sniper who earned international recognition and two hundred and seventy three insignias for his war efforts while in Fallujah Iraq. He had the most amount of confirmed kills ever being one hundred and fifty recorded from 1999 to 2009. The previous American record was one hundred and nine.

Chris was a Texan CowBoy who dropped out of College to join the military. He signed up to become an elite member of the Navy Seals otherwise known as BUD/S, Basic Underwater Demolition Seal. He faced many challenges throughout his career and deployments. One of the first challenges he faced was actually during his BUD/S training, he had completed hell week the initial training period when his sinuses exploded with blood pouring from his ears, nose and eyes causing him to take two months of recovery. This meant that his training platoon and mates graduated and deployed ahead of him while he had to be in recovery. This was very frustrating for Chris as he was fearful that he would not be allowed to continue in his training. Instead of giving in to the frustration and anxiety he found ways to help the instructors to train the new platoons until he was well enough to finnish his training and graduate. In this situation I would have felt the same way as Chris, being worried I would not be able to graduate and join my fellow platoon members. I really admired Chris and how he showed his instructors that he still had value even though being injured. I liked how he pushed through rather than give into his frustration and fears. 

This is something that Chris shows throughout his life. His ability to push through, to be there for others. He feels a strong sense of friendship with his comrades in his platoon. This shows through in his writings of biggles, his brother in arms, his mate. Biggles is a character that really stood out for me as he was important to Chris and because I see a lot of myself in his character. Biggles was the joker, the one who kept everyone smiling. Biggles got shot in front of Chris, he was the first to fall in the Platoon to enemy fire, he survives this to only die later in hospital as a civilian at the hands of an overdose by an incopetant Doctor. This made me angry to hear, after everything this person went through, the loss of an eye, then his other eye to only then die like this seemed wrong. 

I felt this book was really well written as it was real, Chris lived through these experiences and lived to write about it in a way that had me experiencing his actions along with him. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to join the army as this is definitely an emotional story that shows you the true reality of what war is and what it means to be a part of it.