Vietnam Literary Journalism

Question 5 • GA-GSE English Language Arts 11 B

Which excerpt from Dispatches contains a paradox?

Answer

And at night, all of it seemed more possible. At night in Khe Sanh, waiting there, thinking about all of them (40,000, some said), thinking that they might really try it, could keep you up.

If they did, when they did, it might not matter that you were in the best bunker in the DMZ, wouldn’t matter that you were young and had plans, that you were loved, that you were a noncombatant, an observer.

Because if it came, it would be in a bloodswarm of killing, and credentials would not be examined.

Anxiety was a luxury, a joke you had no room for once you knew the variety of deaths and mutilations the war offered.

Explanation

A paradox combines ideas that seem contradictory. Choice D calls anxiety both “a luxury” and “a joke,” suggesting that fear is somehow a privilege in a situation where death is so immediate and varied. The contradiction highlights how little room soldiers had for ordinary anxiety amid the horrors of war.

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