A Study Of The Yellow Birds From The Perspective Of Trauma Theory

Kevin Power's The Yellow Birds is one of the most representative works of contemporary American Iraq War novels.It shows the real war that is different from the cognition of the public.The novel tells the story of the battlefield experience of Bartle,a young soldier who retired from Iraq.After it's publication,it received wide attention and many praises,and it was shortlisted for the National Book Awards in 2012.This paper chooses The Yellow Birds(2012)as the research text,based on Judith Hermann's trauma theory,through the careful reading of the text to analyze and discus the trauma of the characters in the novel,the character's treatments and traumatic narratives in the novel.First of all,this thesis is based on Hermann's classification of traumatic symptoms,combined with the description of the traumatic symptoms of the characters in the text,focusing on the analysis of the different trauma symptoms of the three protagonists,and pointing out the causes.Secondly,the article focuses on two different ways of characters' treatments.In the novel,the narrator Bartle chose to actively reconstruct himself after experiencing the trauma event,while Murphy and Sterling passively used death to get rid of their pain.Two different ways of treating reveal the enormous impact of war on the soldiers and trigger readers' thinking about whether the trauma can be completely cured.Finally,this paper centers on traumatic narrations in the novel.The contradictory narration in the novel combines the poetic language with the bloodiness of the war,which further reflects the cruelty of war and the loss of humanity.At the same time,the non-linear narration further reflects the serious trauma brought by the war to the soldiers.Through the analysis of the trauma,treatments of protagonists and the traumatic narration in the novel,this paper exposes the tremendous harm that the war brings to ordinary soldiers and its great impact on their return to normal life.At the same time,it reveals the author's reflection on the Iraq War,with a view to arousing people's concern about the Iraq War and the retired veterans who have been traumatized by the war.