Writing Homework Help
Towson University Literature Greatest Poems Question
Read the following stories and answer
Do this as Microsoft Word comments, like we’ve done in the past. You should use this document here.
Additionally, there are some reflection and multidisciplinary questions I would like you to thoughtfully engage with.
Finally, literary analysis format is also provided below. Please have that all completed by Thursday, September 30th before class. Submit it as a Microsoft Word document entitled, “[Your First and Last Name] Literary Analysis 02.”
Gerardo Mena (Former Special Forces corpsman)
Insurgent
I killed you this morning.
Wait.
I was brought before you. Called upon to nurse your filthy wounds.
I was asked to ease your discomfort in the remaining time
you had on earth. The tender welts across your back revealed how
Iraqi Police questioned you, and why you confessed
to your crime so quickly. You were just a boy. Lucky to own
sixteen years under your olive skin. I bet you felt invincible. Maybe
even brave. The dull opaque color of your hip bone, visible
through the infected hole left by the bullet, whispered
you only had days to live. I begged God to be there when it
happened. I didn’t hate you for what you did. I didn’t feel much
of anything except burning curiosity. I wanted to unzip you and
place pointy labeled flags into your organs. I needed to see
if your eyes turned to bliss
or fire.
Frederick Foote (Retired U.S. Navy physician)
The Hurt Fedayeen
We shot him through the chest, and now we’re saving his life;
it seems absurd, but that’s what Americans do—
blow a place apart, then put it together again,
pretending it’s good as new.
We won’t recall his face, he’s just a pin in the map
on which, day after day, the war’s reborn—
there’s always a clean glass eye, a limb from the rack,
a fresh martyr to mourn,
while past the sandbagged door, there on the camera set
where CNN packs up the network news,
the maimed world lurches by, calling out for bread,
unwilling to die of wounds.
Carolyn A. Surrick (Music therapist)
The Sniper
I.
What am I supposed to do now?
He is thirty-three years old and was a Special Forces sniper for
fourteen years. The longest consecutive number of months that he
was not in a combat zone in those fourteen years was four months.
He was good at his job. Very good. Until he was blown up.
He was a right-eyed, left-handed shooter. Now he is blind and
deaf on his right side, walks with a cane, and can’t bend his ring
finger and little finger on his left hand.
They gave him a clerical job while he was recuperating. They
told him where and when to show up. They never saw him.
He was there all day but they never saw him. They never saw
him because that was what his job used to be. He used to be
invisible.
II.
He said “Did you hear about what happened last year?”
A shrink finished a session with some guy
Went up to the roof
And jumped off.
III.
Major Nidal Malik Hasan (terrorist, psychiatrist, formerly stationed here)
13 dead
32 injured
45 people shot
IV.
the day after Major Nidal Malik Hasan
opened fire at Fort Hood
my sniper’s friends
sat right in front of me
while I played
they didn’t usually
they might slow down
as they passed
but they wouldn’t stop
and listen
but on this day
they couldn’t find
their friend, my sniper
and by the time he walked
through the automatic glass doors
one of the friends was almost frantic
Where were you last night?
I looked everywhere.
I couldn’t find you.
I looked for you until after midnight.
I went out, he said calmly
I went out for a couple of beers.
But I couldn’t find you.
I looked for you everywhere
his eyes betrayed his panic
I took the metro and went to a pub.
What’s the big deal?
his friend had reached his wits’ end
You’re a SNIPER, he almost yelled
As if that explained everything.
V.
They stayed right in front of me while I played that day, the sixth
of November, 2009. Their talk was crazy. Off the hook. Paranoid.
Self-righteous. I had never heard them like that before.
When a buddy walked up on my sniper’s blind side to bum a
cigarette, and tapped him on the shoulder, I thought, someone
is going to die today. My sniper raised his hand to do damage
to whatever stranger had touched him, and his buddy held both
his hands in the air and said, “Hey it’s only me. I just wanted a
cigarette!”
He said, looking his buddy in the eye, Don’t Ever Do That Again
and then rubbed his hands together to keep me from seeing
them shake.
Reflection and Multidisciplinary Questions:
1. You’ve just read three different poems by three different caregivers. Pick one of the poems. What do you think that poet has to say about how war can affect individuals from a health perspective?
2. We’re about more than a quarter of the way through this class already. How has your perspective changed about the main subject of this class, “war”?