Death Of The Ball Turret Gunner Analysis

The overall message in this poem is a drill sergeant educating young soldiers and preparing them for the harsh reality of war. He is not playing ‘Mr. nice guy’, he is being tough and strict to give the soldiers no easy way out.

Loss is initially explored in the first stanzas of ‘Conscript’ by FA Horn and ‘The Photograph’ by Peter Kocan. Contrasting initial subjects are explored as ‘Conscript’ tells the story of a man enlisted in war, which furthermore teaches him life skills in order for him to advance into a true man, exploring the loss of his identity. This differs to ‘The Photograph’ which explores the loss of a man who was sent to war and tragically killed before experiencing the joys of life. Horn expresses in ‘Conscript’ that metaphorically ‘he’s twice the man he was – a puny chap’ foreshadowing his development into being the man that was sought of him, leaving behind or losing his prior identity. Contrasting to this, Kocan reveals in ‘The Photograph’ loss in a dissimilar way, in which the subject of the poem is identified to have died, with the earlier stanzas of this poem communicating that Jim ‘went to War…’; furthermore stating that he ‘didn’t come back’ with the poet using emotive

Wilfred Owen is almost begging someone (probably the ones who recruit the youth) to tell the world the truth about war, how tarrying everyone is and how difficult is to go on, to keep the hope. For the soldiers there are no dreams of a noble death that everyone will remember through stories. There are no legends that will become myth in their fighting, but real people and real horrific death. The concept of “heroism” that exists from classical literature is not longer valid.

“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.

Like many others soldiers the song writer Lachlan Irvine suffered PTSD being a major reason for writing these poems so people understand what he went through. The meaning of this poem is set upon how bad Vietnam war was like and more focusing on the lesser known parts that happened. The rhetorical questions throughout this poem created great emotional affect upon the audience making them think hard about all these different events. The language used with these questioned is very strong to create lasting effects being extremely upfront one used to

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

He touches on their tragic deaths compared to their hopeful letters of going home and seeing their loved ones. He describes his astonishment as he realizes that none of these men actually showed hatred or abuse towards the German, they simply believed and had conviction in the justice behind their cause. This letter illustrates the feelings of a once happy man, now stuck at war. He says, "War hardens ones hearts and blunts ones feelings…"(p.68). This young soldier has lost all signs of the happy life he led back home. The harshness of war got to him just like the rest of the soldiers out there and if they so much as dreamed about accepting the reality around them, they would have gone either insane or surrendered and he could not give himself that luxury so onward he went.

Lauren Oliver, an American Author, once said “I guess that’s just part of loving people; You have to give things up. Sometimes you even have to give them up.” This quote means that you’re always going to need to sacrifice for the ones you love, there's no way around. Sacrificing for the ones you love is a must, especially for the ones you truly love. This quote relates to All Quiet on The Western Front in many ways. These men are going to the front lines for 2 weeks straight of hell knowing that they could easily be blown up by a mortar shell, or shot right through the head at any moment. Everyday they have a risk of losing an arm, a leg and mostly, their lives. One thing they also risk for the ones they love, is their sanity. War makes everyone go insane whether you like it or not. Veterans who are coming home from service are never the same after all the things they’ve seen and done. War has such a powerful impact on people that some just can’t live with it.

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.

Starting with boot camp in Parris Island, the young man, still reeling from the recent attack on his country, was soon transformed into a marine. With this transformation came the thoughts and feelings that accompanied this gruesome way of life. For instance, following an intense battle on the Tenaru River, Leckie and his fellow men were forced to hear the names of the fallen. Here it is shown just how much a man’s thoughts and feelings can change once going into battle. “It is not always or immediately saddening to hear “who got it.” Except for one’s close buddies, it is difficult to feel deep, wracking grief for the dead, and now, hearing the lieutenant tolling off the names, I had to force my face into a mask of mourning, deliberately adorn my heart with black, as it were, for I was shocked to gaze inward and see no sorrow there” (Leckie, 72). Before the life of a soldier, Robert Leckie presumably would have felt remorse for the men that died in the battle but something in him had changed. After seeing so much loss and pain, the death taking place around him soon became a normal occurrence and as a result, he found his heart hardening to death. This passage shows just how quickly war can change a man and the thoughts hidden within himself. Following this battle, Leckie continued to fight and morph into a man, though changes to his personality and demeanor became

“This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war.”

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.

people at home that the war is good and that if people die there for

Keith Douglas says, “Remember me when I am dead and simplify me when I am dead,” yet remembering Keith Douglas’s life simplistically is a job not worth doing. Known as the best English war poet, Douglas was a poet during the Second World War. “From the age of fourteen he had been writing exceptionally accomplished poems, an early start which allowed him to get in a full ten years.” (Douglas) All along Keith Douglas has been in a poetry metamorphosis of inexplicable changes of state from love to loss, security to insecurity, cherished moments to sinister future.

In the poems; ‘Memorial Tablet’ written by Siegfried Sassoon and ‘In Flanders Fields’ written by John McCrae, we can see the first negative impact war has. Soldiers are robbed by death of the ability to live a normal life.