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Analysis Of Born In The Usa By Yusef Komunyakaa

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Cole Davis Professor Anderson English 201 2 April 2023 Poetry Draft Poetry and music are effective mediums for spreading social and political agendas. The songs "Born in the USA" by Bruce Springsteen and "Facing It" by Yusef Komunyakaa are two examples of works that utilize poetry and music to examine the experiences and challenges of veterans. Although "Born in the USA" and "Facing It" had distinct goals when they were made, they both deal with the effects of war on people and society. Both "Born in the USA" and "Facing It" discuss the loneliness and disillusion experienced by returning troops. It's common to mistake the words of "Born in the USA," "Born in the USA, I was born in the USA," for a patriotic anthem when, in fact, they are a criticism of veterans' mistreatment and the government's inability to assist them. The difficulties that a Vietnam War veteran confronts, like unemployment, poverty, and social isolation, are reflected in the lyrics. Similar to this, the poem "Facing It" explores the speaker's sentiments of loneliness and loss as he approaches the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, DC. The speaker highlights the psychological toll that war takes by attempting to reconcile his own combat …show more content…

The speaker struggles with how best to balance remembering the sacrifices made by his slain teammates with raising issues with the war's

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"Facing It” by Yusef Komunyakaa contains a very reflective tone, lost in the memories the Vietnam Veterans Memorial contains. He compares his own experiences of survival to the perspective he carries as he stands before the wall. As Komunyakaa reads through the inscriptions on the stone, he “half-expect[s] to find [his] own letters like smoke” (6-7). This implies despite his survival, part of him is still living among the fallen soldiers, stuck in the war as if his survival is only physical. The Vietnam War was a great controversy among Americans, most trying to erase the battles they've witnessed in history.

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This passage shows how the soldiers are emotionally and mentally drained by the horrors of war, and how they feel disconnected from the world they once knew. The

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Therefore, Komunyakaa had personal experience from this specific war and the kind of effects it can have on himself and other veterans. Consequently, Komunyakaa was not the only one, where there were many young men who served in the Vietnam War who had to experience the brutality of war. In which, this is one of the reasons why this particular poem is universal, when regarding the themes, because a whole generation can relate to this. Therefore, the historical context, in addition to some context of the author, which only further demonstrates why Komunyakaa chose this specific theme to explore in his poem “Facing It.” , in

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In Yusef Komunyakaa’s poem “Facing It”, he uses a regretful tone to successfully express the speaker’s memories of the Vietnam War. The poem starts out with the speaker looking at the memorial “My black face fades, hiding inside the granite.” (1), which helps visualize for the audience that the speaker is African American. However, this line is meaningful because it shows how he saw all the casualties that came out of the war, on the memorial, and visualizes the speakers hatred for the war. Later it becomes more evident that he was part of the war and how this caused the speaker’s ambivalence to surviving.

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The poem “Facing it” by Yusef Komunyakaa is a deep poem that shows the aftereffects of war in modern society. The article called: “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorders Among Vietnam Veterans”, by Robinowitz and Walter Penk shows the cultural context we need to understand about soldiers after the Vietnam War. By analyzing the article and the poem together we will discover the full cultural context and meaning behind the poem. The message of the poem is that PTSD is a serious issue that has been ignored for far too long, and now is the time to consider those who fought for us.

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This description paints the scenes of the poem as they happen, the powerful connotations of the words battling against each other, and to the grievance of the reader, the negative feelings prevail. This battle illuminates the brutality and fear experienced by soldiers, in WWII, during their final moments on Earth - their fear, sadness, and horrified disgust all hidden between the lines of these two sentences. Foreshadowed by the soldier's machine like tone, the speaker alludes to the fact that he will fight for his life, and

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“Facing It”, written by Yusef Komunyakaa, tells a story of the long list of names on the granite Vietnam Memorial in Washington D.C. The speaker is able to show a great deal of emotion which was able to bring forth emotions in me. After reading this poem I was filled with feelings of gratefulness, sadness, and pride. My grandfather is a veteran of the Vietnam War and I remember when I was a young child making visits to my grandparents house seeing my grandfather in uniform posted in frames on the walls. I remember seeing an American flag folded and laying peacefully in a glass box.

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The grueling Vietnam War, disrupting the lives of soldiers and their families, un-packs its complexities through the journey of the soldiers. After the death of Curt Lemon, a fellow soldier, O’Brien exclaims, “War is hell, but that’s not the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love” (80). O’Brien’s metaphor conveys his perception of the Vietnam War while setting a strong precedent of what the war really was like. Furthermore, it is evident that the complexities of war are hard to navigate as soldiers, tearing away at their mental health, revealing soldier’s experiences at war that corrode their overall well-being. Furthermore, this toll on overall-well being can be self-inflicted when soldiers assign blame to themselves as guilt culminates into lifelong burdens.

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By using historical context, narration, and character usage, O’Brien employs the theme of mental health across to the readers to show the mental health of soldiers during this time. O’Brien portrays the story from a monumental historical point, the Vietnam War, to show how mentally oppressive the war was. The soldiers that were drafted

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He speaks of the sacrifice of the soldiers and the need to honor their memory.

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In addition, the deaths of soldiers will forever be with the ones who remained alive. In “Hope, Despair and Memory” written by Elie Wiesel, the author describes how “for the first time in history, [soldiers] could not bury [the] dead, [they] bear their graves within [themselves]” (2). Throughout the time of a war, each and every soldier will experience a variety of different deaths, each playing a unique emotional role in their lives. War, as challenging as it already may be, is created to be made even more difficult with the immense loss of life every soldier must suffer through. There is absolutely no time to grieve or mourn toward a dear soldier that was lost.

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The title of this group of stories is not solely based on the physical burdens the men had to carry through Vietnam but the mental and emotional issues they are stuck with after the war.

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The language in this column, acknowledges the pain that families are feeling, but also implants the idea that they’re making a necessary sacrifice for the good of the country and should be proud of that. Rhetoric like this had an effect on the population. An Australian mother of two soldiers, Ellen Derham said “I want no Victoria Cross – I want my son” but they later said she was “thankful that my son is not and never has been a coward and I know you will do whatever you consider your duty” (Damousi 369). Derham also wrote “I am weeping now for you both

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I was reading some short stories given by my English professor and there was one that caught my attention the most. The story is called "Charles" by Shirley Jackson. The story talks about a kindergarten boy named Laurie who talked about his days at school to his parents. Every day the boy talked about a classmate named Charles and how badly he behaved. His parents were getting alert of Charles because they believed Charles could be a bad influence on their son.

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