Analysis Of The Death Of The Ball Turret Gunner

“The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner”, by Randall Jarrell, is a surprisingly simple and brief poem; nevertheless it is extensive in content. Due to carefully chosen words, with

Life. Death. Time. The poem “Life” is about how everyone birthed and lives their lives, and then everyone dies one day no matter what. Times runs out for every person on the Earth. This poem reminds me of when my great-grandmother died. She was in her nineties and my family and I thought that she would live longer than she did. It was very sudden and I was shocked at the funeral. I think it was just time for her to let go. It’s hard losing someone who is close with one. The author’s tone is light- hearted and simple. The mood of the poem can make someone feel more comfortable with the thought of death. This essay will show how the author’s tone and the reader’s mood can affect how the poem, “Life” is read.

expressed that all death is the same, and one will go out of the world

“The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” written by Randall Jarrell is a poem that introduces three major ideas in only five lines. These ideas are birth, death, and war. Jarrell is able to accomplish a lot in this short poem by using diction and syntax such as metaphor and figurative language.

The theme death has always played a crucial role in literature. Death surrounds us and our everyday life, something that we must adapt and accept. Whether its on television or newpaper, you'll probobly hear about the death of an individual or even a group. Most people have their own ideas and attitude towards it, but many consider this to be a tragic event due to many reasons. For those who suffered greatly from despair, living their life miserably and hopelessly, it could actually be a relief to them. Death effects not only you, but also those around you, while some people may stay unaffected depending on how they perceive it.

Death is part of the human life cycle, approximately 151,600 people die each day. Everyone wonders how they will die, if they suffer, if it’s tragic or if it’s just simply peaceful. In each of the three poems the main focus is death. Each poem shows a different feeling about death. “Thanatopsis” by William Bryant, “Don’t Fear the Reaper” by Blue Oyster Cult and “Dust in the Wind” by Kansas, all have different meanings of death.

Death is something that everyone has to look forward to at some point in life, but one is temporarily alive by this idea of the “American dream” they are handed throughout a lifetime. It is not until many are faced with adversity that life is truly noticed. For the gunner this moment comes when he is “six miles from earth” facing enemies that he wakes up for the first time. He is awake due to this being the first time in his life that he is truly separated from that dream. Jarrell uses the second half of line three to describe this idea of the detachment from the normality of everyday life. Jarrell is saying that everyday life is just a dream and one is a zombie, dazed going through the motions of typical life. What Jarrell is saying here is that Americans are born dead due to the life they are brought up in and since they are dead do not get to experience real life. The ball turret gunner only truly “lives” for a little bit due to the changing consequences of war around him. Last line of the poem describes his actual death and how

But, in contrast, the speaker is a dead WW2 soldier who describes how the job of a ball turret gunner is a death sentence. In “Death of the Ball Turret Gunner,” Jarrell begins the poem with, “From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State, / And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze” (1-2). Jarrell opens the poem by comparing the belly of an American bomber aircraft to that of his mother’s womb. The fact that Jarrell is comparing the belly of an American bomber aircraft to his mother’s womb is quite ironic because he juxtaposes two things where one symbolizes life, and the other symbolizes death. Jarrell continues to convey his theme of death when he describes how the speaker is off the ground and flying. In “Death of the Ball Turret Gunner,” Jarrell writes, “Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life” (3). Jarrell is foreshadowing the death of the speaker in this line. Jarrell knew that once the speaker was off the ground and in the air, the speaker was on a suicide mission. Most ball turret gunners’ lives in WW2 were short lived. Since they were placed under the belly of the bomber aircraft, if the aircraft was shot down, most planes landed on their bellies, and as a result, the ball turret gunners were killed. In the last lines of Jarrell’s poem, “Death of the Ball Turret Gunner,” he states, “I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters. / When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose” (4-5). Jarrell’s views on death highlight that he is against the unnecessary loss of life. Jarrell is protesting that the job of the ball turret gunner should not have been a job because it was almost guaranteed to be a suicide mission. Jarrell emphasizes his philosophy by including the gruesome visual of people washing out the body of the ball turret gunner with a

The subject matter of death isn't the theme of this poem. The poem prevails truth being disguised and manipulated over documented history. This not only opens the mind into questioning whether historical events truly happened the way historians say it did, or whether documentation can prove a justification of truth, but it forces the second idea to raise questions whether any of the history being told is true at all. The poem "Richard Bone" carries out this idea strongly. The reason this poem plays an interest in my mind is that it synthesizes to current events happening every day in the real world in a variety of ways. The poem places the tactic of truth versus false and how reality plays with this fundamental game with scenarios of

As Engle notes, “In the true way of a warrior, the speaker, in stanza 2, looks her own death in the eye and thereby not only escapes its hold over her, but also achieves that “edge” or tension in perspective essential to living one’s life fully and in the moment. Her attention is squarely upon “Him,” as they ride together in his carriage, and she exhibits no fear.” Whether you believe that the speaker is dead at the end of the poem, or that she has escaped the clutches of Death, this is an important element of this deeply layered poem. I believe that Engle downplays this and writes it off as the speaker being a “friend of death.” I find the speaker to be very anxious and perhaps even very afraid of her demise. Perhaps she hasn’t accomplished all she wanted to do in her

Randall Jarrell put much thought into his poem, “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner”, but more specifically into the tone. Tone is the attitude an author has towards his or her subject and it has the power to be bland, or have a true impact on the literary work being presented. Jarrell effectively used imagery and diction to create the attitude he wanted his readers to conclude in their own way.

Since the beginning of time, humans have sought after power and control. It is human instinct to desire to be the undisputed champion, but when does it become a problem? Warfare has been practiced throughout civilization as a way to justify power. Though the orders come directly from one man, thousands of men and women pay the ultimate sacrifice. In Randall Jerrell’s “The Death of a Ball Turret Gunner”, Jarrell is commenting on the brutality of warfare. Not only does Jarrell address the tragedies of war, he also blames politics, war leaders, and the soldier’s acknowledgement of his duties. (Hill 6) With only five lines of text, his poems allows the reader to understand what a soldier can go through. With the use of Jerrell’s poem, The Vietnam War, and Brian Turner’s “Ameriki Jundee”, the truth of combat will be revealed.

The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” was written around the end of World War II in 1945 by Randall Jarrell. During this time period, Jarrell wrote many poems and novels about the army and the war while he was a celestial training navigator (Pritchard). The poem was written later in Jarrell’s service career. The poem is based on the first-person view of a dead, unknown ball turret gunner of a bomber aircraft. The dead gunner tells us he may have been taken away from his mother and he was drafted or “fell” in the United State military service. The dead gunner hunched into the belly of the bomber, into the turret, and his fur jacket and collar got wet and froze. The dead gunner is miles about earth, loosed, or cut loose, from the dream of having a peaceful and prosperous life on earth.

     The theme of death is present in many works of literature. It is given metaphors and cloaked with different meanings, yet it always represents an end. Every end signifies a new beginning, and every death gives rise to a new birth. Physical death “...is mere transformation, not destruction,” writes Ding Ming-Dao. “What dies is merely the identity, the identification of a collection of parts that we called a person. What dies is only our human meaning” (49). Figuratively speaking, death symbolizes a change, an interruption or cessation of regular routine. In this sense, death can be viewed as a more positive occurrence, because change leads to new experience, which, in turn, leads to knowledge and a better