Walking Point Poem Analysis

“Walking Point”, is a poem published in the Iowa Review written by Terry Hertzler. While flipping through the journal, the poem did not seem interesting at all but I decided to read it anyway. The poem is a free verse poem that consists of seven tercets. The whole first stanza focuses on describing a young child. When I first read the first stanza, I thought that the poem would be about a young boy going on a walk or an adventure given that there is a whole stanza focused on him, and that the title talks about a walk. I thought it was interesting that it mentioned his race as if it were significant to the whole poem. As soon as I saw the word Vietnamese, I automatically subconsciously thought of the Vietnam War. The first stanza also serves as imagery. Through it, I imagine a young malnourished darker skinned Asian looking boy who is standing in a wooded area with a fearful and anguished face. I also imagine that he is very dirty and that his flip flops are very old and probably do not fit anymore. I realized that my hunch that this poem was about the Vietnam War was right when it alluded to the black pajama looking outfits that Vietnamese soldiers typically wore during the war. The second stanza goes from the boy’s physical appearance to his facial expressions. The poem uses a cliché statement that the boy is …show more content…
This shows that the boy has been forced to participate in the war, because when confronted by the enemy, he cowers and runs like an innocent child that is fearing for his life. However, the American soldier, presumably a white male adult, prepares to kill the boy instantly. However, he hesitates, and he takes a second to think about what he is about to do. He tries to suppress his emotions and tells himself to just do it. I believe that this man realized in that moment, that he has been taking innocent lives and couldn’t bring himself to kill someone that he knows is