Essay About Black Face And Black Granite

How Does Poetry Making MeaningHow Does Poetry Make MeaningYusef Komunyakaa uses antithesis between stone and flesh in his poem “Facing it” to emphasize How he struggled between his confusion and apathy when he visited the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.  The poem begin with “ My black face fades, hiding inside the black granite” where creates a image that the speaker was standing in front of the memorial and looking at his own reflection. “Black face” and “black granite” are two opposite objects and the difference between “face” and “granite” is that face can move and it represents alive but granite is a solid and lifeless which related to death. Those two contrary objects expressed the idea that the speaker was spliting himself into two separate part: The illusion and the reality. He could not distinguish between the truth and his imagination. However, “black face” and ‘black granite” are opposite to each other, the speaker uses the same color “black” to describe those two objects, which give us a sense that there are some relations between the “face” and the “granite”. They are still moving closer while they resist each other. As he mentioned his black face fades and hiding inside the black granite, the distinction between his face and the granite was disappearing, and the granite conceals the reflection of his face. It may expresses that the speaker is also disappearing just as those veterans who sacrificed in the Vietnam War, and there is no antithesis since the speaker is join into them. However, the truth is that he is still alive and has to suffer the pain of losing his comrades. Those are two relative emotions that the speaker wanted to express. Then, in line 16 “ my own in letters like smoke”. The “smoke” here also represents that the speaker imagine himself fading in to smoke, which also express the idea that the speaker imagine himself disappear and join in to those veterans.

Although Yusef is immersed in sadness, he wants to conceal his feeling by saying “I’m stone, I’m flesh”, which responses to the idea that Yusef is separating himself into two fragments. “I’m stone” refers his reflection that inside the granite, and “I’m flesh” refers his body outside the granite. Yusef wants to internalize his emotion and feeling by convincing himself that he would be insensible just like “stone”. However, in the previous line “I said I wouldn’t, Dammit: No tears”, Yusef appears really emotional, There exists two extreme affection contrary to each other,so between line 4 and 5 is a transaction between his true feeling and the expression. After he persuade himself that “I’m stone”, Yusef immediately mention that “I’m flesh”, “flesh” is a wired word since normally people would use body to describe themselves, but “flesh” gives us a sense of a soulless body. This might expresses that although his body still exists, his soul is gone.

”Cursors (in Jossim)

Nemesis, as the name implies, was not based purely on the spirit of the deceased, thus a “natural” source of resurrection was not considered. In fact ”nemesis”, ‪an individual with no emotional, psychological, spiritual or physical personality,‼ can only be revived after it receives a gift.[1][2]

”‡Yusef

Yusef can live on, at least partially, without a soul, so he could even die without being put to death.[3]

Curse of the Devil

Yusef had a similar fate in a similar situation in a similar place: “Mister Yusef… is still living. All I have left is a heart he found in his grave, but his soul has never been destroyed. I would’ve found him in our own path to become a better man.”

‡Momma Gath, God of Death

In The God of Death, Yusef describes a woman he finds living in the tomb in order to find a son. In line 4 of the book, he asks the mother why she is still alive: “Isn’t that a lie?” After answering the mother’s question, they continue on to tell the story of how they had lost his soul. While the mother says she is very glad she is alive (she wants to ask him how the ghost of his deceased friend had managed to stay alive?), Yusef leaves her after telling her about what lies could have happened before he died, and begins to ask why she could not see his face, for this will help her to find his soul.[4]

Shakuras

Yusef was also resurrected in The God of Death from time to time, but this time he died not because the body of his slain friend died, but because the body of his fallen friend had begun to decompose. He had been resurrected from the blood of another man just once, and has been reborn in the grave for the rest of his life.

‡Bardot

Yusef can be described in the two books above as a child born of a “sister born of an uncle”: mother of one. He survived one night in the hospital, and had gone from his family to the bathroom where his father had died for him, not realizing he was an uncle or father.[5] During his first night in the bathroom,[6] he noticed the corpse of the deceased man, and found his blood on the floor of the toilet. The body of the uncle was wrapped in cloth, his hand on one end of it, the other in another, and finally on top of the body. He found it in a ditch in a cemetery.[7]

‡Shiragame

After his death, Yusef was resurrected from the dead to live in the mansion of his grandfather. He lived there through the remainder of the book; during the second time he lived it, he lived in the family mansion with his uncle, and the elder brother, both of whom were dead.[8] In line 2, Yusef mentions that he tried to escape the mansion for the better part of a year after his death, but was refused by his mother. It is implied that once the family took over the mansion, he was not the only one living at the