Self And Changing World BM Angelo Casasanto

Analytical Essay:


The world that in which all of us live in is constantly changing. Take a step back and look at the ways that the whole world strives to be aligned with the latest in technology advancements, and the most recent ideals that even go so far to question the idea of war and death as a part of life. The majority of the world will almost always come up with something that helps them hang on for a while. Humans have such an unquenchable thirst for the newest, most entertaining ideals that they tend to forget about the past or the things that happened to them that really matter.


In the book, The Yellow Birds, war veteran Kevin Powers really brought across his thinking and actions during the war through his writing, which is something no other veteran it seems was able to.  On page eleven of the book the main character, Bartle says,"I was not surprised by the cruelty of my ambivalence back then. Nothing seemed more natural than someone getting killed." When he speaks of this ambivalence he simply means that in the state of war his character was overwhelmed by his surroundings and the seriousness of it all that he began to question his original feelings of being there in the first place. He originally didn’t care for death but as the world around him began to change, he quickly began to rethink his position on death.


Later in the book, after Bartle had been sensitized to war, he saw a lot of death and destruction, and he even watched his good friend die. Afterwards he said the following. "It made me feel fine to be walking alone in the rain that day... I began to feel a kind of calm when I passed the townspeople. I couldn't have placed it then, but now, looking back, there was a peace in the absence of talk." After being on the war front for a while he doesn’t seem to understand that people are actually losing their lives and that his friends and team are the one there causing that damage. When he was put into this new environment he slowly began to change. The old Bartle before the war wouldn’t have found peace in the absence of talk, he would have found the opposite.  


In an interview conducted by Knoxnews.com in which they interviewed Kevin Powers in realation to his book. In that interview he said, "The most meaningful praise I've gotten is from other vets who've said that I was able to articulate something that they had been feeling for a really long time but hadn't been able to express." The reason that he was able to articulate these feelings that other vets have is he was there just like they were and he understands that although he was stationed there and it was his job, war is a hard thing to handle. And these vets, just like he did, made up emotions or ideals that allowed them to cope with the devastation.


          In conclusion, although veterans and people who never been to war have totally different ideals, it still relates to them because the whole world can think back to a point in their lives when they strived for something other than what they currently think/have. Humans have such an unquenchable thirst for the newest, most entertaining ideals that they tend to forget about the past or the things that happened to them that really matter.



Works Cited for Analytical Essay:


"'Yellow Birds' Author Kevin Powers Talks about Iraq War, Returning Vets."KNS. Knoxnews, n.d. Web. 14 Jan. 2015. <http://www.knoxnews.com/knoxville/life/yellow-birds-author-kevin-powers-talks-about-iraq>.


Powers, Kevin. The Yellow Birds: A Novel. New York: Little, Brown, 2012. Print.



Narrative Essay:


In my life there has always been a way for me to drown out the struggles of the real world. Weather it be my family life, school work, friendships and hardships. Technology has been a key factor in this problem. It gives us the opportunity to escape from the real world and immerse ourselves in a cyber paradise that mostly all of us have been to. Just like in The Yellow Birds where Bartle and his co-soldiers escape to a place in their minds where they can accept what is happening to them on another level.


In the year 2008, my father had a stroke. It was very serious, in fact he was in the hospital for almost an entire year due to a brain aneurysm rupture. Now I was young and this was very hard for me to handle. For the first couple months my brothers and I didn’t even know what was going on. Then when we didn’t see dad for a while, and our out of state family started flying in we knew something was wrong. I’ll never forget when my Aunt Linda took me and my older brother out on the front step and said, “Guys, your dad is in the hospital and it doesn’t look like he’s going to make it.” Joe and I looked at each other and couldn’t believe our ears.


For a while I was sad, very sad, I would cry my eyes out at night because I knew that my dad might never come home. This was when I became a really big video game person. The first game I bought after this was the very first Rock Band 2 bundle for the Xbox 360. If it wasn’t for this game, for the entirety of the year 2009 I would have been very depressed. But every time I started thinking of my dad I would just turn the Xbox on and play like 20 songs on the drum kit and then sing a couple, this was the only way I could keep my mind off of my dad. Then he came home after a few more months, the doctors said it was a miracle, he had a 95% chance of dying. It was odd though, when I first saw him after all this I felt like he was never gone to begin with.


Not to make whoever’s reading this pity me but I had a pretty rough childhood. After all that brain aneurysm business, my parents split up. Only 6 months or so after my dad got home. I guess being away from each other for so long killed the love. Anyway when they filed for divorce I was angry. Angry enough to get suspended from school. I fought some kid Alex in sixth grade because he said something about my parents. Then 2010 began the cycle of switching between houses. I hated it. This was around the time that I just started to make friends, I started to make my own life outside of my family. I just couldn't deal with all of the fighting and problems anymore. I met this kid Paul who was going through similar problems with his family and to this day we are still friends. We stuck through it all and I'm still switching houses, which sucks but sometimes in life you don't get a choice and you just have to keep rolling with the changes.


All throughout my childhood life I've had hardships. Some that would make most people insane. But with a little help from my friends, technology, and a positive attitude I got through it all and I'm still trucking.

Comments (3)

Naomi Fecher-Davis (Student 2016)
Naomi Fecher-Davis
  1. Something that grabbed my attention was your opening line. I something similar in other papers but I liked the way yours was worded.
  2. I learned more about you as a person and what makes you, you.
  3. I really like the positive note at the end!
Kristina Scalia-Jackson (Student 2016)
Kristina Scalia-Jackson

As someone who know's that your parents split up and how some of that change affected you, I assumed your personal narrative would be about that. But I learned that your dad went through a major trauma when you were a kid right before a divorce and I can only imagine how hard that must've been for you. In your analytical essay, I only wish you introduced the book. I read the yellow birds as well so I understand the references and can identify the characters versus the author, but not everyone can.

Sergei Mass (Student 2016)
Sergei Mass
  1. What grabbed my attention was the part about your parents getting divorced. I have been through that around the same age and believe me it sucked. I would talk to my grandmother about it, but also play games such as Call of Duty to help get my mind off of it.
  2. I learned about the unfortunate experience of him almost losing his dad.
  3. I like how he laid out his pieces. How he came back to connect to the Yellow Birds.