Section 8:

1. “Brannan sent Katie to the school therapist, once. She hasn’t seen any other therapist, or a therapist trained to deal with PTSD—Brannan knows what a difference that makes, since the volunteer therapist she tried briefly herself spent more time asking her to explain a “bad PTSD day” than how Caleb’s symptoms were affecting the family.

This quote is a comparative claim. The comparative claim made in this quote is about different kinds of therapist, specifically the differences between school therapist, therapists trained to deal with PTSD, and the volunteer therapist Brannan went to.

2. “Certainly she seems better than some other PTSD vets’ kids Brannan knows, who scream and sob and rock back and forth at the sound of a single loud noise, or who try to commit suicide even before they’re out of middle school.” 

This author uses a comparative claim in this quote when he mentions how Katie acts better than other children who have parents that are PTSD vets.

3. “Brannan is a force of keeping her family together.”

This quote is an evaluative claim. With it stating that she, herself, is a force behind her family, it involves the judgment that without her, her family would not be together.

4. “She sleeps a maximum of five hours a night, keeps herself going with fast food and energy drinks, gets Katie to and from school and to tap dance and art, where Katie produces some startlingly impressive canvases, bright swirling shapes bisected by and intersected with other swaths of color, bold, intricate.”

This quote is an illustrative claim. The author includes details to what a day looks like with Brannan as well as includes the types of canvases Katie draws. By including Brennan’s schedule, it invites readers to show empathy for her hard day of being the glue to her family. As for Katie’s drawing, it shows how she seems un-affected by her parent that is suffering from PTSD.

5. “That’s typical parent stuff, but Brannan also keeps Caleb on his regimen of 12 pills—antidepressants, anti-anxiety, sleep aids, pain meds, nerve meds, stomach meds—plus weekly therapy, and sometimes weekly physical therapy for a cartilage-lacking knee and the several disintegrating disks in his spine, products of the degenerative joint disease lots of guys are coming back with maybe from enduring all the bomb blasts, and speech therapy for the TBI, and continuing tests for a cyst in his chest and his 48-percent-functional lungs.”

This quote includes a categorical claim and casual claim. The categorical claim in this is all of the types of medicines Caleb takes. The casual claim in this is about the cause and effect relationship between bomb blast and people who are coming back from war with degenerative joint disease.

6. “She also works for the VA now, essentially, having been—after a good deal more complicated paperwork, visits, and assessments—enrolled in its new caregiver program, which can pay spouses or other family members of disabled vets who have to take care of them full time, in Brannan’s case $400 a week.”

This sentence contains a numerical and definition claim. The author uses a numerical claim when he mentions the amount of money Brannan is making from working for the VA. The definition claim comes into play when the author explains what kind of job Brannan has while working for the VA.