Vietnam Wall

The Vietnam Wall

The poem, "The Vietnam Wall" by Alberto Rios had a very profound impact on me. I visited the wall last Christmas and encountered many people mourning for their lost loved ones. The poem helped me understand the feelings that the family and friends go through when they visit the wall. To them it is more than just a wall full of names, it is a place they can go to pray and reflect. The poem is also educational for someone that may have never seen the actual wall. I love how Rios describes the Vietnam Wall as magical, because I realized that is completely true after seeing it with my own eyes. I do not believe a person can truly appreciate the intensity of the Vietnam War until they lay their eyes on the wall of names. This poem gives the reader a feeling of empathy toward all the lost lives of those that fought so bravely for our country.

One of my favorite lines from the poem is, "Names, long lines, lines of names[...]" (18). This line is significant because the wall has such an immensely high number of names, the poem is trying to help the reader imagine the extremity of the war. Another one of the crucial lines of the poem is, "The names are not alphabetized. / They are in the order of dying, / An alphabet of -somewhere- screaming" (23-25). This is a very powerful line, it describes how the alphabet for the wall is derived from the screams of soldiers being killed throughout the entire war. Lastly, a very influential piece of the poem was, "Men have cried / At this wall. / I have / Seen them" (40-44). This part of the poem is momentous because it is rare to see grown men cry, but at the wall stereotypes are not relevant.

Works Cited

Rios, Alberto. "The Vietnam Wall." Discovering Literature. 3rd ed. Eds. Hans P. Guth and Gabriele Rico. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2003.

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