War is marriage metaphor
"The war had become a presence in our lives. We were grooms before a marriage."
Bartle describes the preparation for his enlistment. All his life has turned to preparing, training for the war like a groom that is about to marry.
Battle is like a car accident simile
When asked what it feels like to go out in the battlefield, Murph describes it like being in a car accident. It is like a moment between knowing that it's going to happen and actually happening. It is a helpless feeling. But the difference is that with them that split second moment lasts for days. In other words, every time soldiers go out into the battle they are prepared for death.
Decaying bodies growing like plants simile
"All others who died in Al Tafar were part of the landscape, as if something had sown seeds in that city that made bodies rise from the earth, in the dirt or up through the pavement like flowers after a frost, dried and withering under a cold, bright sun."
Bartle has a lack of emotions for the ones who died in Al Tafar but weren't with them. To him they are like a part of the landscape, like plants growing from the ground. And this lack of emotions helps him to justify all the killing.
Simile for fragility of life
"It’s as if your life is a perch on the edge of a cliff..."
Bartle has a hard time getting back to normality after he returns from war. He is depressed, ashamed of himself and has suicidal thoughts. His life is fragile as a perch on the edge of a cliff; he is unable to go forward.
Bloody angel made of dust metaphor
It is a metaphor for the death of an innocent as there are a lot of innocent civilians killed in the war. A man is killed by a mortar and the last tremors of life leave an impression in the ground that to Bartle appears as a bloody angel.
Dying before death “I think he was probably dead before he fell. It just isn’t that great a height”
This moment in The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers encapsulates the core of the novel’s narrative. While Murph was physically mutilated and killed before having his body thrown, there is a deeper connotation to his fall being meaningless. His experience of war killed him before his actual death. This, in turn, metaphorically killed Bartle whose grief for Murph was insurmountable. Murph’s meaningless fall in The Yellow Birds indicates the physical and psychological toll of war on the lives of the two main characters, Bartle and Murph, highlighting the broader themes of human suffering, trauma, grief, and lasting friendship.
As war started to break Murph's spirit, he found solace in watching a beautiful medic treat soldiers. He was looking for signs of humanity to fill his lifeless existence, to remind him of the greater meaning of it all, and when the medic died, Murph had nothing to hold on to. This ties back to the meaningless fall metaphor; Murph had nothing worth fighting for in his life, he was stripped off of all his hope and compassion. Just like his actual fall, his murder seemed insignificant since he was long dead inside.
For Bartle, this metaphor had a different meaning. While the fall put the final nail in
Murph’s coffin, it dug a grave for Bartle’s remaining life. He did not just lose his best friend, he lost himself. His mind was consumed by Murph’s memories and he could not stop replaying the events leading up to his death. He kept thinking, “If only Murph were here, but Murph was not there. Never would be. I was alone” (62). He felt alone because Murph was, in many ways, his only companion. They experienced immense suffering together that nobody else could ever truly comprehend. A part of his pain also stemmed from guilt. He saw Murph slowly drifting away and did not do anything about it. It is likely that he blames Murph’s death on himself. Since Murph died alone, Bartle did not have the opportunity to defend him in the face of death. In addition to that, he could not live with the burden of breaking the promise that he made to Murph’s mother of bringing Murph back alive.
