A Study Of Kevin Powers' Reflection On The Iraq War In The Yellow Birds

The Yellow Birds was written by the American writer Kevin Powers(1980-)in 2012 who once joined the US army when he was 17 and served as a machine-gunner in Iraq in 2004-05.Although it is his debut book of novel,The Yellow Birds receives wide attention and acclaim since its publication.In 2012,it reached the finalist for the National Book Award,won The Guardian First Book Award,and was listed by the editors of The New York Times as one of the ten best books.As a war novel,The Yellow Birds focuses on an American soldier,Private Bartle,who has returned from the Iraq War and is working to piece together a full picture of his experiences.The theoretical framework of this thesis is based on the Canadian academic Linda Hutcheon's postmodern theory.She considers that postmodernism is fundamentally contradictory,resolutely historical,and inescapably political.Thus,this thesis applies the methodology of text analysis and explores,as a witness as well as a participant of the war,Kevin Powers' profound reflection on the Iraq War from the perspective of the war itself,the individuals and the history.Overall,this thesis consists of five parts.The first chapter is an introduction which lays out the general information of the thesis.In this chapter,research background of the thesis,Kevin Powers himself and The Yellow Birds are introduced at first,and then previous studies towards The Yellow Birds as well as Kevin Powers are reviewed and analyzed chronologically.Furthermore,Linda Hutcheon's postmodern theories are demonstrated briefly.At the last part of introduction,research objectives together with the structure of the thesis are pointed out.Chapter two,Chapter three and Chapter four belong to detailed analysis of The Yellow Birds.First of all,Chapter two records Kevin Powers' reflection on the Iraq War from the aspect of war,including Kevin Powers talking about humanity and war,the cruelty of the Iraq War and its poetic expression,and the juxtaposition of two story lines as well as the application of Anachrony in The Yellow Birds,which embodies Linda Hutcheon's viewpoint that postmodernism is fundamentally contradictory.In Chapter three,the thesis discusses Kevin Powers reflecting on the Iraq War from the perspective of individual,which is illustrated from three aspects,including American soldiers struggling among survivors,murders and heroes,soldiers unclear about what they would face during the war,soldiers' spiritual loneliness on owing unique experiences.The three aspects further demonstrate the distance between American public and the war,which also manifests Linda Hutcheon's understanding that postmodernism is inescapably political.Chapter four mainly focuses on analyzing Kevin Powers' reflection on the Iraq War from the angle of history.In this chapter,the thesis author discusses the Holocaust and Kevin Powers inserting into two actual events(Samar Hassan's and David's events)in his novel.More importantly,the thesis author analyzes Kevin Powers' purpose on mentioning these events,that is,conveying the idea-the presence of the past-and also interrogating the history and criticizing human nature to be forgetful of evils past and ignorant of evils to come.Here,Linda Hutcheon's standpoint that postmodernism is resolutely historical is clearly illustrated.The last chapter of this thesis is entitled conclusion which makes a brief summary of what have been discussed.Kevin Powers resorts to the above-mentioned three aspects in his novel,aiming to reflect on the Iraq War and call for people to cherish peace.Through discussion,this thesis further proves Kevin Powers' success in writing the Iraq War novel and the literary value of The Yellow Birds.In addition,this thesis also provides a new perspective to understand this novel and also promotes further research on the Iraq War novels.