Ball Turret Gunner

Penned during two distinctly disparate eras in American military history, both Erich Maria Remarque's bleak account of trench warfare during World War I, All Quiet on the Western Front, and Tim O'Brien's haunting elegy for a generation lost in the jungles of Vietnam, The Man I Killed, present readers with a stark reminder that beneath the veneer of glorious battle lies only suffering and death. Both authors imbue their work with a grim severity, presenting the reality of war as it truly exists. Men inflict grievous injuries on one another, breaking bodies and shattering lives, without ever truly knowing for what or whom they are fighting for. With their contributions to the genre of war literature, both Remarque and O'Brien have sought to lift the veil of vanity which, for so many wartime writers, perverts reality with patriotic fervor. In doing so, the authors manage to convey the true sacrifice of the conscripted soldier, the broken innocence which clouds a man's first kill, and the abandonment of one's identity which becomes necessary in order to kill again.

“The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” by Randall Jarrell is able to accomplish so many thing with so little lines-mainly through the use of metaphor and diction. It explains the terrors of wars in gruesome detail and explains the ways in which wars, in a sense “breed” and “birth” death. To some, this poem is seen as the ultimate poem of war, and rightly

The soldiers who had attended the war were shown to have died brutally, like “cattle”, yet when reaching the home front, it is seen that they are laid to rest in a much more civil and dignified manner. The concept of this can be seen as an extended metaphor throughout the entire poem, with the battle front seen as a world filled with violence, fear and destruction, where as the home front is perceived as a place marked by order and ritual, a civilized world. The second sonnet opens with “What candles may be held to speed them all?”, invoking a more softer and compassionate tone towards the audience, more specifically through Owen’s use of a rhetorical question. It captures the readers’ attention, engaging them to feel empathetic and notice the shift of energy from anger and bitterness to a sadder and more somber tone. Owen’s use of descriptive language, as simple as it seems, such as ‘boys’ and ‘girls’ provokes the audience to view the horrors of the war as if they had been placed onto children, because in reality the ‘men; who had signed themselves into war to fight in glory for their country had really only just been boys themselves.

The poem starts with similar word choices as ‘The Soldier’ but written in the perspective of the mother. The mother tells his son that when he dies he will be in a place of ‘quietness’ and free from the ‘loss and bloodshed’. This reinforces the fact that the battlefield was full of horrors and death. The poem then moves onto how ‘men may rest themselves and dream of nought’ explaining that the soldiers do not have to fear for their lives after their death. This illustrates how they feared for their lives and had negative connotations.

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

Jarrell also used a great deal of figurative language in this poem. The entire poem is an extended metaphor. This poem compares the struggles of war with the struggles of being born. More specifically, it compares being killed the belly of a plane and being killed in the womb of a mother. We see

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

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.

This essay is about a story or poem called death of the ball turret gunner. I really like the story or poem whatever you would like to call it.It explains how everything was back in World War II with the bombers and how they had people on the bottom of the plane because Jets were coming up from the bottom. And here are three messages from the ball turret gunner.

Poets frequently utilize vivid images to further depict the overall meaning of their works. The imagery in “& the War Was in Its Infancy Then,” by Maurice Emerson Decaul, conveys mental images in the reader’s mind that shows the physical damage of war with the addition of the emotional effect it has on a person. The reader can conclude the speaker is a soldier because the poem is written from a soldier’s point of view, someone who had to have been a first hand witness. The poem is about a man who is emotionally damaged due to war and has had to learn to cope with his surroundings. By use of imagery the reader gets a deeper sense of how the man felt during the war. Through the use of imagery, tone, and deeper meaning, Decaul shows us the

causes the poem to flow, and thus lightens up the dark and serious issue of war. The lines "But ranged as infantry, And staring face to face, I shot at him as he at me, And killed him in his place." are easy to read; however, their meaning is extremely

As the audience envisions “yellow trenches” (13) filled to the brim with putrid battle scarred victims, it becomes all the more obvious that Crane’s true intentions lie in striking against the lack of “honorable…sacrifice” (Bouchard) in the “drill” (19) of “the regiment” (17). As the “booming” (6) thuds of gunshots and falling soldiers continue to pollute the atmosphere, the daunting nature of combat shrouds the tone of the poem. According to Everett Gillis, the “rich…mature” tones that blanket Crane’s words do well to emphasize his blatant contempt for war. The cruel bloodshed that paint each “eagle with crest of red and gold” (18) show the irony of wars constraints. An eagle is brazen in its nature, bold and free in its liveliness, yet the men in this dark scene lie in the midst of chaos, unable to escape as the pride they seek “flies above them” (9) beyond reach. Crane’s intense imagery and metaphor emphasize the pointless strive “men were born” (8) to foolishly

The importance of writing one’s understanding of war sheds consciousness upon the cruelty, malevolence, and death by ignorance. Reports of cruelty begins with Jarrell's recitation in his poem “Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” in which he explicitly connects the death of a young soldier to that of an aborted child. Though only 5 lines long, using metaphoric language Jarrell is able to imply that only death can be fermented from the womb of the war. Harboring readers taunt emotions that stick to them like "wet fur". Whilst bringing the audience to a resolution set in stone that war can solely gives the taking of life from another’s child. In comparison, Hemingway transcribes of a man spat back into a life that did not change with him instead

Randall Jarrell's poems and short stories are mostly about war and it's affects on humans. Randall Jarrell persuaded the minds of people in society to enjoy and appreciate life through his powerful and touching literary works including 1. The Bat-Poet, 2. The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner, and 3. Losses. His poems dramatically interpret fears and struggles of young soldiers.