Essay Outline
I. Introduction
A. Facing It
B. Thesis: In the poem Facing It, Yusef Komunyakaa caught my attention because of the title, and how Yusef explains the meaning of his title, by the way he describes the wall, and the types of speech he uses in the poem.
II. The title
A: The way Yusef describes the meaning of the title.
1. Facing It involves a wall memorial, engraved on the wall are names of deceased veterans.
2. Yusef sees the memorial as a resemblance of himself in some ways as he says “my black face fades, hiding inside the black granite.” This is referring to his own skin color and the color of the black memorial.
B: The memorial doesn’t bring up new emotion but old ones instead.
1. Yusef struggles with reading the names on
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He says “black face fades.” This tells us that Yusef is African American, more importantly this tells us the key word fades, meaning that he wasn’t the only person affected by the war.
2. It seems that Yusef is anger for surviving the war, and it seems his emotions are hard for him to deal with, as he uses another example of visual imagery when he says “Dammit; Not Tears”
B. Yusef uses metaphors to pick himself back up.
1. Yusef uses metaphors such as “I’m stone. I’m flesh” this shows he is split.
2. On one hand, Yusef feels strong and steady like the wall, but he also realizes that he just a man, who has feelings and he cannot be strong and steady like the wall at all times.
V. Conclusion
In conclusion, the poem is about a Vietnam war veteran who is visiting a war memorial and is having a hard time dealing with the fact that he is a survivor of the war. The speaker gives reason to why he is feeling such a split, and why he is having such a hard time dealing with his emotions. The speaker describes himself as well as the memorial as stone which means he thinks of himself as strong and steady, but the speaker also realizes that he is too only a man and he is also “flesh” meaning he is only but man and he does have emotions which the memorial bring out of