Answers NC-English Language Arts 11Zora Neale Hurston’s Strong Voice

Vietnam Literary Journalism Answers

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Read the excerpt from Dispatches. The far side of the hills around the bowl of the base was glimmering, but you could never see the source of the light, and it had the look of a city at night approached from a great distance. Flares were dropping everywhere around the fringes of the perimeter, laying a dead white light on the high ground rising from the piedmont. There would be dozens of them at once sometimes, trailing an intense smoke, dropping white-hot sparks, and it seemed as though anything caught in their range would be made still, like figures in a game of living statues. There would be the muted rush of illumination rounds, fired from 60-mm. mortars inside the wire, dropping magnesium-brilliant above the NVA trenches.The sensory details in the excerpt evoke a sense of

awe and wonder.

confusion and disgust.

hope and strength.

surprise and excitement.

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Which excerpt from Dispatches contains sensory language to describe the geography of Vietnam?

There would be the muted rush of illumination rounds, fired from 60-mm. mortars inside the wire, dropping magnesium-brilliant above the NVA trenches for a few seconds, outlining the gaunt, flat spread of the mahogany trees, giving the landscape a ghastly clarity and dying out.

It was awesome, worse than anything the Lord had ever put down on Egypt, and at night, you’d hear the Marines talking, watching it, yelling, “Get some!” until they grew quiet and someone would say, “Spooky understands.” The nights were very beautiful.

Once in a while—I guess I saw it happen three or four times in all—there would be a secondary explosion, a direct hit on a supply of NVA ammunition. And at night it was beautiful. Even the incoming was beautiful at night, beautiful and deeply dreadful.

Nights were when the air and artillery strikes were heaviest because that was when we knew that the NVA was above ground and moving. At night you could lie out on some sandbags and watch the C-47’s mounted with Vulcans doing their work.

Which excerpt from Dispatches contains a paradox?

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.

Read the excerpt from Dispatches.I remembered the way a Phantom pilot had talked about how beautiful the surface-to-air missiles looked as they drifted up toward his plane to kill him, and remembered myself how lovely .50-caliber tracers could be, coming at you as you flew at night in a helicopter, how slow and graceful, arching up easily, a dream, so remote from anything that could harm you.Based on the sensory details, what can be inferred about the narrator’s feelings toward the airstrikes he witnessed?

He was fascinated by the way they looked.

He became drowsy from their slowness.

He despised them because they were destructive.

He feared them for their unpredictability.

Which excerpt from Dispatches is an example of paradox?

And at night it was beautiful. Even the incoming was beautiful at night, beautiful and deeply dreadful.

One hit anywhere in the chopper would bring you back, bitten lips, white knuckles and all, and then you knew where you were.

At night you could lie out on some sandbags and watch the C-47’s mounted with Vulcans doing their work.

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.

Read the excerpt from A Rumor of War. We left Vietnam peculiar creatures, with young shoulders that bore rather old heads.What is the author attempting to convey to the reader using sensory language?

Only old men were allowed to fight in the war.

Injuries caused veterans to age more quickly.

While their bodies were young, their minds were old.

Physical damage caused psychological damage.

Which sentence from Dispatches contains the best example of sensory language?

Sometimes you’d step from the bunker, all sense of time passing having left you, and find it dark out.

There would be dozens of them at once sometimes, trailing an intense smoke, dropping white-hot sparks, and it seemed as though anything caught in their range would be made still, like figures in a game of living statues.

Once in a while—I guess I saw it happen three or four times in all—there would be a secondary explosion, a direct hit on a supply of NVA ammunition.

Which excerpt from A Rumor of War best illustrates Vietnam’s uncomfortable climate?

By autumn, what had begun as an adventurous expedition had turned into an exhausting, indecisive war of attrition in which we fought for no cause other than our own survival.

But there were no Normandies and Gettysburgs for us, no epic clashes that decided the fates of armies or nations. The war was mostly a matter of enduring weeks of expectant waiting and, at random intervals, of conducting vicious manhunts through jungles and swamps where snipers harassed us constantly and booby traps cut us down one by one.

The tedium was occasionally relieved by a large-scale search-and-destroy operation, but the exhilaration of riding the lead helicopter into a landing zone was usually followed by more of the same hot walking, with the mud sucking at our boots and the sun thudding against our helmets while an invisible enemy shot at us from distant tree lines.

Weeks of bottled-up tensions would be released in a few minutes of orgiastic violence, men screaming and shouting obscenities above the explosions of grenades and the rapid, rippling bursts of automatic rifles.

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

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.

Which excerpt from A Rumor of War contains the best example of sensory language?

Having been among the first Americans to fight in Vietnam, I was also among the last to be evacuated, only a few hours before the North Vietnamese Army entered the capital.

America seemed omnipotent then: the country could still claim it had never lost a war, and we believed we were ordained to play cop to the Communists’ robber and spread our own political faith around the world.

The discovery that the men we had scorned as peasant guerrillas were, in fact, a lethal, determined enemy and the casualty lists that lengthened each week with nothing to show for the blood being spilled broke our early confidence.

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Vietnam Literary Journalism Answers

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