Q2 BM Changing Worlds Essay

Analytical Essay

Dealing with the death of someone close is a life changing event that no one has control over. Because they lack this control, people become shocked of the news and it takes a while for them to fully understand that person is now gone.


Losing someone who is close to a person is the worst feeling in the world. When someone passes away, their loved ones and the people closet to them go through a long and hard process that takes lots of time to get over. In the book, “The Yellow Birds”, when Bartle and Sterling are watching Murphy’s body go down the river, Bartle was stunned and did not know how to feel about it all. But, Sterling said, “ Like it never happened, Bartle. That’s the only way.”( Pg. 211).  Sterling is telling Bartle that the only way for him to get over the death of Murphy is to forget that it ever happened. But what if that makes things worse for Bartle? What if    he can not forget it and move on from this whole new experience. This could maybe help him move forward in life by remembering little moments from this event.


With death, people start to regret things that happened to that person or things that happened between the person. In the book, Murphy’s mom says that she wished he would have stayed home and did not go off to war but she also knew that it was his duty to go war for his country. Murphy’s mom knew that it would have been better for him to stay home where he could have been safe. When you are a loved one or a friend of that person you wish that you could have done something that could have prevented their death to come.

Sometimes when there is a lot of deaths happening around you, you want to ignore it all so that you In the book, Murphy is telling Bartle about a guy who was just killed and Murphy cut in front of him in a  lunch line. Murphy didn’t even know the man but because he was just killed, he felt bad about it. Bartle told Murphy to not worry about it. This shows that with death happening around Bartle that he is being insecure and just brushing off Murphy’s concerns with the man. Bartle also wants to ignore the death happening around him and ignore it because it is shocking news to him. It shows he also understands it could’ve been him and he has no control over it. 

In a interview about the book, “The Yellow Birds”, the author, Kevin Powers says, that with death,“All pain is the same. Only the details are different”. What he is trying to say is that the pain of losing somebody close to you feels the same for everyone. It’s how you deal with it and get  through the pain and grief that is different. Death is something in life that takes a lot to overcome. 



Narrative Essay


During my life, I have lost both my grandmother and my father. Both were completely important people in my life. I didn’t know what to do after losing them both. It was strange to live without them and go about my day now thinking that they will not be in my life anymore. With death, it is hard to forget it after some time. You don’t think that this would happen to you this fast in your life. It’s something you don’t expect to happen so quick and soon in your life. 


Hearing the news is the worst part no matter how bad or how good your day is going. When I found out my grandmother had passed away, I was home in my room just laying in bed listening to music. I get a knock on my door. It’s my mother. I tell her to come in. When she opens the door, I see her crying.  I only knew what it could be. She tells me the news and begins to cry more. I never want to see my mother cry. I bring her into my arm. She explains to me that my grandmother loved me and was a very good woman. I knew all of that but I just sat quiet and nodded my head. She left me standing in the middle of my bedroom floor. I heard in my head what my mother told me. “Your grandmother passed away”. I continued to repeat it until it was stuck in my head and the last time it was repeated, I broke down in tears. I didn’t know what to do. There was no one to hold me now. Flashbacks of my life with her and things that we used to do started to flood my mind as I sit there with tears running down my face. 


The same thing happened when I heard the news with my father but very different. For my father, I was waiting for my report card conference. While I was waiting, I get a call from my brother saying that my mother called him saying she sounded like she was crying telling him to hurry home and she had something to tell us. Without hesitation, we followed her instructions and headed straight home. We get close to home and we get another call from our mother saying that our uncle will come to pick us up. When our uncle came to pick us up he stopped us and said. “listen. I want to tell you this before I take you over to your father’s house. Your father passed away today. Your mother and your sister found him today. Your sister and your mother are very emotional right now and it is ok to cry.” He then told us that he is here for us if we need him for anything. We get in the car and begin to head to wear my father lived at. The whole time I was thinking to myself, how could this happen so soon? I had just spent the weekend over his house like I would normally do. He wasn’t feeling good when I saw him but it wasn’t this bad. I started thinking about what could have happened. How would my life now be without one of my very important people in my life.


The days after losing them was the most depressed I had ever felt. There was nothing that could really cheer me up. Everything seemed to move slowly. I was out of school for a lot of the time so that meant that I would have to make up some work and homework to catch up. I couldn’t do it. I could barely turn in work on time. Everything was being turned in late or forgotten about over time. My grades started to fall dramatically. I had to find a way to catch my self up before the quarter ended. I tended  to not have the urge to go down for dinner when it was ready or get up to find food until my stomach began to grumble. I couldn’t go to sleep at night because I would be reminded of them every other hour.


But sometimes with death, comes a sense of happiness. With my family, both funerals weren’t quiet and depressing. They were us and friends reflecting on the life of my grandmother and my father. We talked about his life and how kind and friendly he was to other people. With my grandmother, we did the same thing. With my family, we believed that people who die, will go on to heaven. This made it somewhat easier to cope with the death of both my grandmother and my father. It helped me ensure that both of them would be in a better place. You then get to see pictures that you never got to see before and share more memories. Dealing with death is a hard thing to deal with but when you surround yourself with more positive things and people, you begin to get back into your normal life and not worry so much about it anymore.

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