Q2 BM Changing Worlds Essay

Analytical Essay:

After every war, or every deployment to war, there are always soldiers who come back with emotional damage being expected to mold back into society’s way of life. Changes such as the one Bartle was expected to go through when returning from war come in multiple phases. Soldiers are expected to come back and almost instantly get their normal lives together while adjusting to an environment that doesn’t have them constantly feeling like they are still deployed at war. As a result, they go through severe phases of depression and a lot of times, things like suicide is a popular option among these guys.

We saw this in chapter 7 when Bartle finally decided to go out with some friends for the first time since coming back from the war and leading up to that part of the book we learned pretty much Bartle’s daily routine after the war. We know that he is going through a depression and it all comes to a climax when he takes this small trip with some friends. He’s out with friends and decides to go out into the river while his friends are all still on shore not really noticing at first. As time goes on he kind of dozed off and ends up falling asleep face down in the water.

His friends then notice and see that their depressed friend Bartle is lying face down in the water and drag him out thinking that he has drowned which he probably did but that is not the point. The point that the writer of “The Yellow Birds” is trying to make that goes almost perfectly with the thesis of this essay is that soldiers coming home from war go through a tough time. It comes in a set of phases, now how many phases, nobody knows, it is different for almost every person coming from war. As stated in the thesis as well, a lot of times, this time of severe depression(PTSD) can and has a lot of times led to suicide.

Works Cited for Analytical Essay:

1. Anderson, Pauline, and Désirée Lie. "Depression, PTSD Worsen Several Months After Soldiers Return." Medscape. Medscape Medical News, 15 Nov. 2007. Web. 12 Jan. 2015. <http://www.medscape.org/viewarticle/565954>.

Narrative Essay:

So sophomore year was by far my worst ever academic year. I wasn’t motivated to do anything my self esteem dropped severely and I felt like an outcast at home. Well as time went on between February 2014 and April 2014, people(my parents) started to take notice(mainly because my advisor noticed and pointed it out at the first narrative conference of the 2013-2014 year.) Anyways my parents realized that the same ways they treated my two younger siblings(my brother and my sister) wasn’t going to do a good job of helping my situation with school at all.

As a result, people like my parents and my brother and sister started to hang around me a little more thinking that spending time would heal all of my emotional wounds. So the school year finished, I barely passed World History and my parents decided not to really punish me for the bad grades but they put limits on all the things I could do like play video games. So summer started rolling through and things were starting to go back to normal until mid July.

It honestly felt and until that point of the day had gone on as any other day, wake up, get dressed, do chores, eat breakfast, play video games, eat lunch,play more video games with friends, but around like 6 or 7 pm, I paused the game just to stretch out and I pulled out my ipod touch and saw that I had a bunch of messages on the kik messenger app. I open it up to see what was happening and I see that one of my friends had sent me a text saying that a mutual friend of ours had run away from home and left a note saying he was going to kill himself.

I stopped everything and started talking to a bunch of friends and everyone is going crazy. I made up my mind right then and there that I was going to go help search for him. I knew my mom wasn’t going to help search and I figured that my dad who had been the Leader of my scout troop the last time that kid had come would also not hesitate to help search and that no matter how much begging I was going to have to do, I was going to help in the search any way that I can. My dad came home from his night shift at work and he must have heard about the situation on his way home because he was scrambling to change out of his police uniform so he could go search. Honestly my mom didn’t really want me to go and at first so did my dad. It took about ten minutes of back and forth arguing before I just stopped listening and changed out of my pajamas into regular clothes.

We searched and searched for hours and couldn’t find him. By the time we got back to the house, we could see the sun rising. We knew that there would be searches going on all week until they found him and though my parents didn’t really agree with me going to all the searches, I went and we didn’t find him. Keep in mind he went missing on a monday or tuesday I believe, and that saturday, my dad had worked during the day and when he got home, again just your normal day for a teen during the summer, we had friends over and I remember my dad pulling me and my little brother and sister aside and telling us that a body had been found in the area where we thought my friend had gone missing and that they were trying to confirm his identity through DNA.

I had the feeling inside when I heard the news that it was him and we had been told that his mom had indeed ID’d him through just seeing him as they wheeled him away.