In the poem “Facing It” by American author Yusef Komunyakaa, the author uses in order to express to his audience the close experience of making his journey to the Vietnam War Veteran's Memorial in Washington, DC. Through the use of these various literary devices, the speaker is not only able to draw the audience into his involvement in the war, and place the events of the war inside the lives and hearts of his audience. The speaker of the poem, whom the reader can assume is Komunyakaa himself, faces the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial Wall with all of these feelings. Komunyakaa uses the wall as a backdrop to express these feelings. In the poem, the wall is used as at times a window into the speaker's grief about the war, a reflection of his sadness.
The essay is strongest when Quindlen is reminding us of the soldiers and the real, human loss when they are killed in battle. She reminds us that they are human beings, and our hearts go out to them. Without being too diehard, she does make us ask questions about the war we’re involved in. When she tells us that “Every name on the sloping black wall of the Vietnam Memorial tells a story,” it reminds me of when I went to visit the Memorial. The names are endless. It
First artwork is the Vietnam War Memorial in 1982, designed by May Lin. What I see in this picture is that it looks like a park area is created having a lot of fresh green grass and long trees. It also have very elongated walls. The walls are made from mirror-like surfaces that reflects the images of the surrounding trees, monuments and people. As it is a Vietnam War memorial place, I observe that people staring at the walls depicts that the walls have something related about the Vietnam War. It can have written description about the specific people participating in the Vietnam War. It’s like a long granite wall inscribed with the names of all those men and women that sacrificed their lives during this war. I also see how these mirror like
In the poems of “Dulce et Decorum Est” and “Facing It” written by Wilfred Owen and Yusef Komunyakaa respectively, two entirely different yet similar stories of war are told. “Dulce et Decorum Est” is told through the perspective of our narrator as he’s directly in the middle of a war and of the horrors he sees. From the unforgiving terrain to the description of the already beaten down soldiers, and quickly followed up with a gas attack, it is not a pretty picture. The poem tells of the soldiers scrambling to put their helmets on to shield them from the gas, but not all of them make it. One soldier helplessly fumbles with his helmet and does not manage to put it on in time. The images of his friend choking and drowning are all too real for
"Facing it" by Yusef Komunyakaa reveals to us other sides of the war, using vivid images and metaphors. The poem tells the story about the violent war, which is difficult test for a person. Unusual rhythm gives the poem its beauty and unforgettable character. The brevity of some of lines attached the poem dramatic hue. Hero, who identifies himself with the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, is allowing us to understand the atmosphere of the event and the sorrow of people affected by war. Yusef Komunyakaa reminds to the reader about the main things, such as courage, bravery and valor.
With this knowledge in mind. I can confidently say that Kogawa is using the wall as a symbol to represent a problem, and the literal imagery Kogawa uses in this poem, is there to tell us that there are more than one way to overcome a problem too. Another
The conflict among individuals and society is continuous and sometimes inevitable. Both the short story by Nadine Gordimer, Once Upon A Time, and the poem by Alberto Rios, The Vietnam Wall, express different concepts of society and individuals. Set in South Africa, Once Upon A Time, uses symbolism in some characters to show that fears can cause harm to others. On the other hand, the poem The Vietnam Wall shows symbolism and imagery to convey the authors theme that a simple black marble wall can unite people regardless of race, color or age. The differences among The Vietnam Wall and the short story Once Upon A Time support the idea that individuals and society can have conflicts, but at the same time, unite together as a whole for a common cause.
In "Facing it” a poem by Yusef Komunyakaa, the utilization of symbolism to propose the tone brings out various emotions from anticipation to fear. The use of imagery to suggest the tone evokes many different feelings from anticipation to fear. In the beginning of the poem the speaker talks to himself while holding back tears at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington DC. During this time the viewing of the Memorial brought back countless uncomfortable memories for a Vietnam Veteran such as the speaker. While he is there he is going through many different emotions, he is envisioning them as they are moving on, remaining in sorrow or just being a hardened veteran in the wall. As a veteran of the Vietnam War, the speaker reconsiders the familiarities of pain and having been in one of the most challenging wars in US History. The memorial wall
“It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.” The message Henry David Thoreau conveys is looking is not seeing, a theme that is very evident in Facing It. By getting in touch with the reader’s senses, he allows them to empathize and really feel what it was like to be in his shoes. A war is hardly something that can be understood by reading black and white words on a page. In order to truly comprehend the war experience, one must see and feel what is was like to be on the battlefield. Throughout the work, Komunyakaa references the reflective surface of the memorial. He does this in order to show the reader that the monument is not just names on a dark stone, but a representation of thousands of
The architect and sculptor Maya Lin is best known for designing the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall. A long, angled wall of black granite engraved with soldiers’ names, the wall is revered for the power of its design. Both in this monument and in a later one, the Civil Rights Memorial, Lin used simple forms to create environments that draw people in and connect with them personally. She has said that she thinks of her work as “creating a private conversation with each person, no matter how public each work is and no matter how many people are present.”
What this is pictures meaning is, that our lost brothers and sisters will always be remember dead or alive. The Vietnam memorial has over 58,000 lives upon that wall. America to me
Imagine winning a nationwide contest over some of the best names is architecture as a twenty-one-year-old college student. For Maya Ying Lin, the dream became a reality. She not only won a monetary prize, but her design was also constructed in Washington, D.C. Finished in 1982, a black, reflective wall, sinking down into the earth became known as the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. The author of the passage, Brent Ashabranner, chose the title, “Always to Remember: The Vision of Maya Ying Lin,” because of the Vietnam Memorial’s special effect on the nation that will never be forgotten, and the way that Maya Ying Lin took the opportunity to create a vision that paid tribute to those who were lost in the Vietnam War.
FACING THE WHIP is an entertaining and fun story that centers on a single, middle-aged parent, who is forced to reinvent her life. The theme of second chances is well incorporated into the script and the script explores the question if a person can have both a family and a career.
When the Communists planted their flag on the roof of the presidential palace, it was the moment Saigon fell and everyone’s hope felt as if it was vanishing. In this poem, the author is trying to tell us how agonising and desperate it was for the Vietnamese to see how their country fell. On the last stanza, it says “Then he adds what no one wants to hear…”, this tells us that Saigon’s fall was no good news to anyone. The tone of this poem is hopelessness, because they all knew they had just lost their homes. At the same time, relief rushed through them because of the “bombs in the greater distance” and how they knew they were safe from the Vietnam war. Há’s mother was “sick with waves from her stomach”, most people think this was because she
What may be one of the most significant effects to take away from poetry is how it is not always trying to convey only one idea, but how it uses the image of one concept to bring forth another. In this case, both Seamus Heaney’s “From the Frontier of Writing” and Yusef Komunyakaa’s “Starlight Scope Myopia” are excellent examples of how this is done. In Heaney’s poem, war is used as a metaphor for writing while in Komunyakaa’s poem, attention is brought to the effect of war from the perspective of a soldier on the battlefield. Both poems use the images of war as a medium to deliver a different outlook on different subjects. However, how both poems do this is also very different in how each poet chooses to mask the subject and how the details are presented in order to align both the emotions of the reader and those of the speaker.
Salvador Dali was a Spanish artist who drew some of the most gorgeous yet obscure paintings in the world today. The nuances of his work express such great ideas that it is believed one could never perfectly analyze one of his works of art. Sticking to this trend, The Face of War is a somewhat ugly landscape painting with a moving meaning behind every stroke. The desert-set painting features a snake inundated, skull-like face which was drawn to personify everything that war is. The subtleties in the picture help describe this personification further, as it fleshes out the idea that war is an atrocious and terrifying occurrence that leaves sheer agony in the wake of everything it touches. Those tortured by such an event are left with permanent scars, whether it be in the form of the loss of their home, morals, or even life.