READING COMPREHENSION PASSAGE (CLASS 11 AND 12)

 SOLVED WORKSHEET 12

The Vietnam War (1955-1975) was fought between communist North Vietnam, backed by the Soviet Union and China, and South Vietnam, supported by the United States. The bloody conflict had its roots in French colonial rule and an independence movement driven by communist leader Ho Chi Minh. Vietnam was a battleground in the Cold War, when the United States and Soviet Union grappled for world domination. By war’s end, North and South Vietnam would be reunited, but at great cost. 

READ THE POEM CAREFULLY AND ANSWER THE QUESTIONS GIVEN BELOW:

ABOUT THE POET

Yusef Komunyakaa is an American poet who teaches at New York University and is a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. Komunyakaa is a recipient of the 1994 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, for Neon Vernacular and the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. He also received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize.Komunyakaa enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1969. He served in Vietnam as a war correspondent (and later an editor) for The Southern Cross, a military newspaper (1969–70), earning a Bronze Star for his service.

FACING IT 

BY YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA – born 1947 aged 73

Stanza 1

My black face fades,
hiding inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn't,
dammit: No tears. 
I'm stone. I'm flesh.

 

Stanza 2 
My clouded reflection eyes me
like a bird of prey, the profile of night
slanted against morning. I turn
this way—the stone lets me go.
I turn that way—I'm inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
again, depending on the light
to make a difference.

 

Stanza 3 
I go down the 58,022 names,
half-expecting to find
my own in letters like smoke.

I touch the name Andrew Johnson;

 I see the booby trap's white flash.
           Names shimmer on a woman's blouse

 but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.

Stanza 4 

Brushstrokes flash, a red bird's 
wings cutting across my stare.
The sky. A plane in the sky.
A white vet's image floats
closer to me, then his pale eyes
look through mine. I'm a window.
He's lost his right arm
inside the stone. In the black mirror
a woman's trying to erase names:
No, she's brushing a boy's hair.

 

1. Who is the speaker in ‘Facing it”?

The speaker of "Facing It" is a Black man who fought in the Vietnam War.


2. How many names are written on the wall?

The two 200-feet-long walls contain more than 58,022 names. The names are listed in chronological order by date of their casualty and begin and end at the origin point, or center, of the memorial where the two walls meet. Having the names begin and end at the center is meant to form a circle – a completion to the war.


3. Why does the poet almost leave the memorial?

He is upset by all the "screaming" deaths the names represent.


4. I touch the name Andrew Johnson; I see the booby trap's white flash- Explain.

He also shares the name of the 17th U.S. president, who succeeded Lincoln and denied freed slaves equal protection under the law by vetoing the Civil Rights Bill in 1866. He didn't get to do many accomplishments because he was impeached before his term was up, but he did make some major accomplishments which have made our economy and nation stronger. One major thing he did was that he got rid the fourteenth amendment. By Johnson doing this it gave citizenship to African American males.


5. Why is Andrew Johnson’s name mentioned in Vietnam Memorial wall?

Notably, Andrew Johnson was also the name of a young Black soldier from Yusef Komunyakaa's hometown who died in action in Vietnam. In turn, the appearance of Johnson's name represents both the speaker's attempt to mourn a fellow Black soldier and the pervasive, inescapable racism that has marred America's history.

His primary concern was for the preservation of the Union, and he believed all else would fall in place afterwards. On October 24, 1864, Johnson freed all the slaves in the state of Tennessee.


6. What is the theme of the poem?

Facing it" by Yusef Komunyakaa deals with the themes of memory, war and survival. This poem, one of Komunyakaa's most famous, depicts a veteran's encounter with the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C. Despite his resistance, the speaker becomes emotional at the stone wall, which is polished to a mirror.


7. What is the setting of the poem?

The poem takes place at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. As the poem indicates, the memorial bears the names of 58,022 American soldiers who died or were otherwise lost in the Vietnam War.


8. Which lines from the poem "Facing It" best reflect the narrator's struggle between his desire to maintain control and the strong emotions that he feels?

I'm stone. I'm flesh.


9. What does the memorial symbolise?

The memorial is the symbol of pain and horrors of war.


10. Why does the poet say Names shimmer on a woman’s blouse?

He sees the names on the memorial reflected on a woman’s blouse. Such rapid shifts in perception underscore the narrator’s dream-like state of mind. While he sinks deeper into the memories of his own painful experiences in the Vietnam War, he is also jarred out of those memories by what is happening in the present.


11. Why does the poet say that “a woman's trying to erase names”

That the speaker’s initial perception is of a woman attempting to erase the names from the monument highlights the speaker’s enormous grief. If only the names weren’t there, then the deaths they represent wouldn’t have happened. In both cases and throughout the poem, the speaker’s perceptions move between the past and the present, the desired and the real, from what he remembers to what is actually there in front of him.


12. Why is the poet very emotional when he sees the names in the war memorial?

He was a participant in the Vietnam War.