Ain't Burned All the Bright

The narrator’s mother spends the entire book glued to the TV, watching reruns of a negative news cycle that only talks about “how we won’t change the world / or the way we treat the world / or the way we treat each other” (7-10). She represents the way that catastrophes, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, and broader social injustice, like systemic racism and the police brutality that it enables and encourages, can overwhelm and consume people. She is so fearful and worried about what might happen to her family that she essentially stops living. It becomes a kind of self-sustaining feedback loop, and as a result, the perpetual feed of awful news stories only makes her worry even more.

This behavior not only has a negative impact on her but impacts the rest of the family as well. The omnipresent negativity of the news begins to impact the narrator’s state of mind, and he can’t understand why she won’t change the channel. There is also a strong impression—represented by every single depiction of the mother being from behind her as she stares at the TV—that she has completely withdrawn from the rest of the family. The significance of this becomes evident during the commercial break, when “the beginning / of the beginning / of a laugh / that never even bloomed” becomes the catalyst for the narrator’s realization that he can find oxygen in his family (250-55). It prompts him to reassess what is important, and when the news comes back on, and the entire family is sitting together, he has the strength and optimism to think they might get through things. This is also the only time the mother is depicted from the front—suggesting her importance to the family—and with everyone together, the narrator finally speaks up about changing the channel.

The narrator’s father first appears in Breath Two and is self-isolating in a bedroom because he is sick. He is bedridden, damp with sweat, and has a severe cough that the narrator is struggling to comprehend. The narrator spends a lot of time trying to describe the cough and the way his father looks as he comes to terms with his father’s sickness. A lot of the descriptions use metaphors comparing the cough to thunder or out-of-tune musical instruments, and nearly all of the artistic depictions of his father focus on his chest and throat, emphasizing how concerned the narrator is about his father’s health.

Despite his poor condition, the father remains positive and attempts to lift his son’s spirit. While Ain’t Burned All the Bright uses a lot of red and blues to depict the abject state of the world and its negative impact on the family’s mental health, yellow is used to represent hope, relief, and love. Yellow is closely associated with the narrator’s father and the reassurance he provides. For instance, there is a bright yellow sun depicted in the artwork when the father smiles and holds up his arms as if to hug the narrator from a distance. While this stability may only be a projection of strength and hope—the sun is followed by an image of a thunderstorm because the narrator can tell his father is suppressing a cough and trying to keep his smile from cracking—it underscores the father’s resilience and how he embodies one of the core ideals of the text: No matter how bad things get, “the fever / ain’t burned / all his bright up yet” (136-37).

The narrator’s brother spends the entire book refusing to look away from the video game he is playing. Compared to the chaotic depictions of the real world (which is constantly on fire or underwater and rendered in harsh reds and dark blues), the video game he plays is depicted as calm, serene, and even idyllic. It uses lush greens, has clear blue skies, and the houses and roads are ordered and pristine. While this suggests the brother is retreating to this virtual world as an escape from all the terrible things happening in the real world, the frantic movement of his hands while he plays the game “as he fights / for an extra life” implies that this calmness is a facade and not a sustainable means of coping (87-89). Broadly, the brother represents the impulse to look away from things that are unpleasant or uncomfortable—to maintain a state of willful ignorance because it feels easier to refuse to acknowledge reality than it is to accept and process it.

Toward the end of the book, the narrator jabs his elbow into his brother’s ribs again and finally gets his attention. His brother puts down the game, and the two begin to tussle. Their fight starts a chain reaction of the other family members reacting to or intervening in their fight. The fight also feels like it might “knock the wind into [the narrator]” (321)—the opposite effect of what would normally happen—and aligns it with the kind of everyday, previously annoying but now life-affirming occurrence that the narrator has just learned to appreciate. The fight represents a return to the mundane normalcy of family life and pulls each family member out of their isolation to break them up. Importantly, once the fight is broken up, instead of going back into their isolated coping, the family sits together on the couch, and the narrator finally feels a sense of hope for the future and speaks up about changing the channel.