Ain't Burned All the Bright

Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses anti-Black racism and racist violence.

“[I’m sitting here wondering] why the news won’t

change the story

and why the story won’t

change into something new

instead of the every-hour rerun

about how we won’t change the world

or the way we treat the world

or the way we treat each other”

The narrator’s refrain that the news is repeatedly covering the same topic provides a lot of narrative and thematic structure for Ain’t Burned All the Bright. It’s not only repeated at the beginning and end of each breath—mirroring the negative news cycle that loops again and again, and adding to the sense that the narrator is stuck in time—but the constant pessimistic presence of the news contributes to the narrator’s anxiety about the state of the world and his feeling of being overwhelmed and helpless, highlighting The Negative Effects of News Exposure.

“[A]nd my brother

won’t even look up from his video game

even when I put my hand over the screen”

The video game is a means of escape for the brother. The fact that he doesn’t even look up when the screen is blocked suggests that his refusal to look away from the screen is more about not wanting to face all the terrible things that are going on around him than an obsession with the game he is playing, showing his method of Coping With the Overwhelming State of the World.