In his book Dien Cai Dau, Yusef Komunyakaa writes about the atrocities and horrors of the Vietnam War. He emphasizes certain themes that are common throughout most war novels we’ve read so far, including, the fear of the unknown, death, and loss of innocence.
The poem “Tunnels” reminds me a lot of one of the chapters in O’Brien’s book. Komunyakaa tells of a soldier, usually the smallest one in the platoon, crawling through a tunnel and describes the feeling of fear and of the unknown. “He moves as if trying to outdo blind fish easing toward imagined blue, pulled by something greater than life’s ambitions. He can’t think about spiders or scorpions mending the air, or care about bats upside down like gods in the mole’s blackness.” He describes that the soldier can’t worry about little things such as spiders or scorpions because what lay ahead may be even worse. Death could be around any corner. This is what the soldiers had to deal with every day, the unknown. They had no idea what was going to happen then tomorrow, the day after or even the next week.
The next poem I read was “Roll Call.” This poem is honoring 5 fallen soldiers who died in the war. They’re symbolized by their “M-16 propped upright between a pair of jungle boots, a helmet on its barrel as if it were a man.” Death is something that is seen every day throughout the war, the soldiers are accustomed to it. They don’t recognize each soldier individually, but rather pay tribute to them as a group.
The last poem I read was “Thanks.” In this poem, the soldier is praying to a higher power. In all the other novels we’ve read, religion is a common theme. The soldiers thank God or some other spiritual being for their survival. I noticed that the soldier is giving thanks for the simplest of things, things that a civilian wouldn’t normally give thanks for. He give’s thanks to the monarch that was sitting on the booby trap, he gives thanks to the hills and the tree that moved only when he moved.
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In his book Dien Cai Dau, Yusef Komunyakaa writes about the atrocities and horrors of the Vietnam War. He emphasizes certain themes that are common throughout most war novels we’ve read so far, including, the fear of the unknown, death, and loss of innocence.
ReplyDeleteThe poem “Tunnels” reminds me a lot of one of the chapters in O’Brien’s book. Komunyakaa tells of a soldier, usually the smallest one in the platoon, crawling through a tunnel and describes the feeling of fear and of the unknown. “He moves as if trying to outdo blind fish easing toward imagined blue, pulled by something greater than life’s ambitions. He can’t think about spiders or scorpions mending the air, or care about bats upside down like gods in the mole’s blackness.” He describes that the soldier can’t worry about little things such as spiders or scorpions because what lay ahead may be even worse. Death could be around any corner. This is what the soldiers had to deal with every day, the unknown. They had no idea what was going to happen then tomorrow, the day after or even the next week.
The second poem I read was “Thanks.” In this poem, the soldier is praying to a higher power. In all the other novels we’ve read, religion is a common theme. The soldiers thank God or some other spiritual being for their survival. I noticed that the soldier is giving thanks for the simplest of things, things that a civilian wouldn’t normally give thanks for. He give’s thanks to the monarch that was sitting on the booby trap, he gives thanks to the hills and the tree that moved only when he moved.
The last poem I read was Tu Do Street. This poem had a lot of racism within it. Komunyakaa speaks of the cars on Tu Do Street and that they were segregated. In this poem, the speaker walks into a white bar. He writes, “The music divides the evening.” The white men listen to country music and the black men listen to rock and blues. He later states, “Only machine gun fire brings us together.” Here he is referring to the segregation not only in Vietnam but also back home in the United States. The only reason they are together is because they are fighting the same war.
Komunyakaa uses his poetry to speak to the reader, not only about the atrocities of war and the horror and death and all the feelings that follow, but also to tell them about the racism and scandal that goes on during the war as well.