Yusef Komunyakaa’s poem “Facing It” is intentionally composed to create the intense scene of a war veteran from Vietnam going to the war memorial and having momentous flashbacks and reflection. The first focus that the analysis of “Facing It” has is the meaning. The meaning of this poem is to mainly expose how Komunyakaa views war and the influence that he believes race has on war (Kraus 1). The next part of the analysis is the main themes of this poem, which are the brutal experiences of war, the influence of racial discrimination on Vietnam soldiers and their daily life, and the large difference between the outside of someone versus the inneremotions of people (Kraus 1). Through the poem’s actual text, Komunyakaa relates how war impacts
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One of the first things that is learned from the poem is the meaning behind the poem. The meaning is to expose a story about how a child recalls how he learned English, which was through a woman that his family kept in hiding, and how it was affected by violence. The poem utilizes a mindset that is about reflection on past memories. The main theme in the poem is memories and how violence pervades and isn’t forgotten. Komunyakaa uses a freeverse to tell and illustrate a story without any actual form. He uses many intentional line breaks and punctuation to emphasize the brevity of the reflection. In the specific text from the poem, there are lines that the narrator of the story uses to show the two extremes of how he can be cherishing moments of learning English and in the next moment the woman he was learning from is killed. In the beginning of the poem, the narrator is not talking about anything but war when he says, “When I was a boy, he says, the sky began burning, / & someone ran knocking on our door” (Lines 12). These lines talk about the first thing the narrator talks about is him as a boy and how remembers war as a child, and also someone coming to their door. The fact that this is the narrator’s first memory shows how much war had an influence on his childhood. Another group of lines that show how the narrator was affected by violence when he says, “But one night I woke to other voices in the house. / A commotion downstairs & a pleading.” (Line 2526). These lines show how the narrator as a child has the traumatic experience of being woken up and listening to the woman who they were sheltering being taken away. Near the end, the narrator bluntly tells that, “Years later my aunts said two German soldiers / shot the girl one night beside the Vistula. / This is how I learned your language.”
One of the first things that is learned from the poem is the meaning behind the poem. The meaning is to expose a story about how a child recalls how he learned English, which was through a woman that his family kept in hiding, and how it was affected by violence. The poem utilizes a mindset that is about reflection on past memories. The main theme in the poem is memories and how violence pervades and isn’t forgotten. Komunyakaa uses a freeverse to tell and illustrate a story without any actual form. He uses many intentional line breaks and punctuation to emphasize the brevity of the reflection. In the specific text from the poem, there are lines that the narrator of the story uses to show the two extremes of how he can be cherishing moments of learning English and in the next moment the woman he was learning from is killed. In the beginning of the poem, the narrator is not talking about anything but war when he says, “When I was a boy, he says, the sky began burning, / & someone ran knocking on our door” (Lines 12). These lines talk about the first thing the narrator talks about is him as a boy and how remembers war as a child, and also someone coming to their door. The fact that this is the narrator’s first memory shows how much war had an influence on his childhood. Another group of lines that show how the narrator was affected by violence when he says, “But one night I woke to other voices in the house. / A commotion downstairs & a pleading.” (Line 2526). These lines show how the narrator as a child has the traumatic experience of being woken up and listening to the woman who they were sheltering being taken away. Near the end, the narrator bluntly tells that, “Years later my aunts said two German soldiers / shot the girl one night beside the Vistula. / This is how I learned your language.”