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Facing It by Yusef Komunyakaa

In one light the narrator sees himself standing in front of the memorial and in another light he sees himself as being one with the memorial, almost like a ghost. The narrator also describes his mind balancing between the past and the present when he turns a certain way. "I turn this way--the stone lets me go. I turn that way--I'm inside the Vietnam Veterans Memorial again" (Komunyakaa 8-12). The imagery used here shows the narrator's struggle to balance the light and the reader can sense that struggle with him. That same struggle of balancing their mind is fought by many war veterans. In most cases, these war veterans don't ever truly balance their mind; they just learn how to deal with the triggers and flashbacks.
             When a person holds back a certain emotion, whether it is pain or grief, they can cause an internal war just within themselves. Soldiers who have seen the brutalities of war are susceptible to seeing flashbacks of traumatic experiences if they choose not to talk about or "face" the situations that have impacted them. In lines 14 through 18, the reader can almost feel the internal war that the narrator is having as he "go[es] down the 58,022 names" (Komunyakaa 14). The reader can see that a part of the narrator's soul died in the war as he is "half-expecting to find [his] own" name on the Vietnam Memorial (Komunyakaa 15-16). Another example of that struggle is when the narrator finds the name of Andrew Johnson and then sees "the booby trap's white flash" (Komunyakaa 18). This line indicates one of the narrator's flashbacks and is reliving the death of one of his friends during the war. Both of these examples emphasize the internal struggle within those who have experienced war and the effects it leaves with them. There are healthy triggers as well. When a person is reliving a traumatic experience mentally, more often than not there is something or someone that will bring them back to the present.


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