Changing World Essay

Analytical Essay:

Friendship is a mutual bond between two or more people, a stronger form of an interpersonal bond than an association (Wikipedia). Such a dry definition does not give the concept of friendship justice. Friendship is putting someone else first, and it is not a large theme in The Yellow Birds. The relationship between the two main characters, Bartle and Murph is not one of close friendship. It is difficult to define their relationship. The main reason that Bartle concerns himself with Murph at all is because of a promise that he made to Murph’s mother, he promised her he would look out for her son, and bring him home from the war. Despite the fact that they were almost complete strangers. Still, he felt obligated to keep his promise, regardless of the fact that he despises keeping it. Bartle spends a fair amount of time thinking about how much he doesn’t want to be responsible for Murph. After Murph dies, Bartle looks back on the moments that he didn’t comfort Murph, or ignored his behavior, and wonders that if he had comforted and consoled him, could there have been a chance that he could’ve saved him? Reliving each moment and thinking of different scenarios is what caused Bartle to become so depressed after he was discharged, but the root of it was that he did not keep his promise.  

Although it feels like a memoir when reading it, all of the characters are fictional and the story is fictional. Author Kevin Powers enlisted in the army when he was seventeen years old, he fought in Iraq as a machine gunner assigned to an engineer unit. "I think I had to come to terms with my own experience before I was able to contend with it in writing," Powers said in an interview with The Guardian. The Yellow Birds is Powers’s answer to the wider question of "what it was like over there.” He set out, he says, with the aim of "seeing if it would be possible to paint a portrait of the war looking out from inside of this one soldier" (The Guardian) The focus of the book, very personal, going back and forth between the war, and Bartle’s life after in Virginia, he switches, sometimes mid-sentence, between the two places.

“The root of his guilt is that he wanted to be good, and he tried to be good, but he failed. His conflict is between his desire to redeem that failure and his acceptance of complete powerlessness.” (Kevin Powers) This is about where all of  Bartle’s guilt really comes from, he does feel guilt from Murph’s death, and from his survival, but the root of it all is the fact that Barle never actually kept his promise to watch out for Murph, and bring him home.