Poem Analysis: The Vietnam War

Kairos: The poem’s setting begins as the narrator is sitting in his wheelchair in the dark. It says that he was wearing a “Legless, sewn short at elbow” (line 2) which allows the reader to see that he has lost his legs. Then the setting moves in to the past as his memories become of topic. In his memories he remembers how it was to dance with girls and have a good time. Then at the end of the second stanza we move back into the present as the narrator reminds us that now the girls want nothing to do with him and look at him like a “queer disease”. Then, at the beginning of the third stanza we flash back into his memories as the narrator explains how handsome, energetic, and full of life he was before going into the war. He then flashes back on his days of playing football and when he was hurt he was celebrated as a hero. Then towards the end of the third stanza, he explains
Then we find out that he is an ex-solder. Once we figure that out, we can start to put the bigger picture together. We can tell that the main character loved his life before the war and had a way with the ladies as explained in the third stanza. We also know that because of his physical appearance that people specifically women are now scared of him and treat him like a disease. We know that the main character was completely naïve when it came to his decision to join the army because he could only see the false happiness it would bring. He thought that he would be seen as a hero and a strong man that would attract the ladies. Little did he know till after the war that “they (the recruiters and propaganda) wrote his lie” (line 29). We can tell that the narrator being an ex-solder is angry and bitter with society and the government over the war because now as mentioned in stanza five he is looked at as a freak and now is completely reliant on others, where as before he was a handsome jewel of a