Vietnam Literary Journalism — Quiz

Question 29 • English Language Arts 11

Which excerpt from Dispatches uses imagery to reflect the conflicting emotions that soldiers face during a war?

Answer

Flares were dropping everywhere around the fringes of the perimeter, laying a dead white light on the high ground rising from the piedmont.

It was different with the incoming at Khe Sanh. You didn’t get to watch the shells very often. You knew if you heard one, the first one, that you were safe, or at least saved. If you were still standing up and looking after that, you deserved anything that happened to you.

Night was when you really had the least to fear and feared the most. You could go through some very bad numbers at night.

No wonder everyone became a luck freak, no wonder you could wake at four in the morning some mornings and know that tomorrow it would finally happen, you could stop worrying about it now and just lie there, sweating in the dampest chill you ever felt.

Explanation

Choice C directly contrasts two emotions soldiers experience at night: they have “the least to fear” but “feared the most.” This opposition reflects the conflicting feelings of relative safety and intense fear. The other excerpts use vivid imagery or describe danger and anxiety, but they do not express this emotional conflict as clearly.

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