Read the following accounts of two different Vietnam veterans first visit to the Wall, the Memorial on which the names of all those killed in the Vietnam War are inscribed. First Visit to the Wall . . . by Rex Rutkoski is a prose account; Facing It by Yusef Komunyakaa is a poem. Discuss the effect that genre has on the two authors descriptions; what does the poetic version do that the prose version does not? Use evidence from both accounts in support of your thesis.
The essay should be approximately 500-600 words and should have a clear beginning, middle and end.
FIRST VISIT TO THE WALL WILL NEVER BE FORGOTTEN
(from WQED Vietnam Stories)
By Rex Rutkoski
Dale Shultz was two years younger, but old enough to take part in our neighborhood games. Freeport Borough Field and its play areas often were the focal point for afterschool evenings and weekends and our summer days. In the winter, if we got there before the salt truck, the alley behind Dales house was great for sled riding. A good, slippery day would get us all the way to Third Street, maybe beyond, if we went down piggy-back, although we made sure we were extra cautious after we heard that Freddie down the block slid unhurt under the tail end of a passing car.
I remember Dale as one of the nice guys. If there were arguments in our games, I dont recall him being part of them. He was quiet, somewhat shy, somewhat, in those days, like myself.
Because we were in different grades in school, I did not get to know Dale that well, but I liked him. Everybody seemed to like him.
In 1970, our games became reality. In February of that year, as a belated college graduation and wedding present from the Army, I went to Vietnam. Dale, who also had enlisted, left on Mothers Day. He volunteered for training in sniper school and ranked third in his class, earning a Bronze Star and Combat Infantryman Badge with the First Battalion of the 14th Infantry. He transferred to Chu Lai and two days before Christmas was killed in action when he stepped on a booby trap.
Just as my wife and family were receiving word in Freeport that I would be coming home, Dales family and fiance received a knock on their door from Army representatives letting them know that Dale also was on his way home. He had become the 71st Alle-Kiski Valley (Pittsburgh suburbs) serviceman to lose his life in Vietnam.
I thought about Dale and those other men when I was in Washington, D.C, with my family a few weeks ago and we made our first visit to the Wall, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. I wanted to go to the Wall for myself. Though it soon will be two decades since I spent a year in Vietnam, Im still trying to come to terms with what that time meant. I wanted to go to the Wall for our children, too, so they might understand the impact of war apart from their school textbooks. I wanted them to understand it in the way the young boy we saw there that afternoon began to understand it when he asked his dad, Are all those the names of guys who served or died? When his father told him that each of the 58,000-plus names engraved on those black granite panels were fatalities, the boy uttered an exclamation of amazement. The Vietnam War began to come home for him.
Thats what the Wall is supposed to do: put the Vietnam War in human terms so that, Id like to think, we give long and sober thought to the prospect of never becoming involved in something like it again. Consider the capacity of the Steelers stadium and youll have a bone-chilling understanding of the number of names on that Wall. They are the names of men and women like Dale, many just teens, who were loved and who are missed.
I wanted our children to see the notes and messages and photos and personal memorabilia left by those loved ones at the Wall, such as the birthday greeting a daughter put there that day below her fathers name. Daddy, the note attached to the flowers said, I still miss you. I also wanted to go to the Wall for Dales mother who told me when we spoke last Memorial Day weekend that she still had been unable to bring herself to visit that memorial and risk the possibility of revisiting those horrible memories.
Our youngest daughter, who never would have been born had I not been more fortunate in Vietnam than Dale, helped me select the flower that we took to the Wall to lay at the base of the 10-foot-high panel bearing Dales name. Because it was near the top, she snapped the photograph of his inscription for me, as I held her on my shoulders, our oldest daughter and my wife
steadying us. Together, we summoned a park ranger and she mounted a ladder to make a wall rubbing of Dales inscription for us.
When his mom feels shes ready, I want to give it and the photo to her. I think shell be pleased to know that, though his inscription is up very high, the Washington Monument reflects off Dales name. I was grateful that my family and I were able to walk away from the Wall together. They just as easily could have been there, I knew, trying to find my name.
Facing It
BY Yusef Komunyakaa
My black face fades,
hiding inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn’t
dammit: No tears.
I’m stone. I’m flesh.
My clouded reflection eyes me
like a bird of prey, the profile of night
slanted against morning. I turn
this waythe stone lets me go.
I turn that wayI’m inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
again, depending on the light
to make a difference.
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.
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 womans trying to erase names:
No, she’s brushing a boy’s hair.
Yusef Komunyakaa, Facing It from Pleasure Dome: New and Collected Poems. Copyright 2001 by Yusef Komunyakaa. Reprinted with the permission of Wesleyan University Press.
Source: Pleasure Dome: New and Collected Poems (Wesleyan University Press, 2001)
