Facing It Lesson Plan

Which lines let the reader know that the speaker fought in the war? What emotion is being expressed here? How does the text speak to the fragility of life? Can the general public relate to how the speaker feels? How or how not?

Lines 14-16: “I go down the 58,022 names, / half-expecting to find / my own in letters like smoke.” With these lines, readers come to understand that the speaker is a veteran of the war, not merely a visitor at the memorial. Komunyakaa seems to be expressing surprise and sorrow in these lines. In the face of the 58,022 names before him, it is against all odds that our narrator has survived his experience. This point is driven home in the...