Yusef Komunyakaa Analysis

Yusef Komunyakaa’s poem and Stephen Crane's excerpt factor similar and different events throughout their stories. While Crane’s piece is written from one man’s point of view, Komunyakaa uses the collective voice of a group of soldiers. In Crane’s excerpt, it talks more about fighting, what’s happening and going on in the war. In the poem, it talks more about what the soldiers do to mask their feelings and their emotions to stay strong and not get distracted thinking of memories of family.

Although Crane and Komunyakaa are both poets, they have their differences. Crane is writing about the civil war while Komunyakaa wrote about his experience of the Vietnam war. Crane’s historical background is inspired by reading about soldiers and their experience first handedly. “The Red Badge of Courage” is more of a psychological portrait of the main character’s perception in a time of war relating to Henry Fleming's experience in combat. Komunyakaa wrote his poem based on his personal experience of actually being there in the vietnam war serving as an information specialist.

In “the Red Badge of Courage” the Narrator only focuses on one main character “the youth,” Henry Fleming's is more of an outsider. Henry is just watching other soldiers fight while he’s doing his own. “The separation was as great to him as if they had marched with weapons of flame and banners of sunlight. He could never be like them.” It tells us how isolated he is. In “Camouflaging the Chimera” the narrator is participating with what all of the soldiers are doing and in this case that’s camouflaging. In the poem, it uses the word “we” and gives away that they all are doing the same thing. Nobody is left out. Henry is a stranger to his team while Komunyakaa was physically and mentally apart of his team. Krane’s genre in the poem is non-fictional while Crane’s excerpt is