Poetry Close Reading

In the middle of the poem, the speaker arrives at the number of casualties from the war. When he reads this number he can’t believe that he is still alive. As he reads down the names he uses the visual imagery and simile to describe how he expected to find his own name in “letters like smoke” (line 16). This helps the reader understand how lucky the speaker felt about somehow escaping the war still alive. As he goes

The author was giving a message then at the end of the poem it changes. He was giving the message that war happens to everybody and that they will have to go to war at some point in there life. The problem is that they don’t know the bourdon that it puts on the people that he has supported and been supported by until his son is sent of. He gets a totally different feeling when he doesn’t know what could happen to his son. He gets his message across by proving that every body has something to do with war wether they like it or not. Your parents might have been to war, if not them then your uncles, cousins, friends, or your neighbors(old men). Then if it isn’t them it could be your child who is going and the feeling is different, you lose the feeling of security when you cant protect your child. He

When Jarrell says the words, "hunched in the belly," the reader gets a very uncomfortable feeling. In line number three the reader gets visual imagery as well as slight tactile imagery. The visual imagery comes when Jarrell says, "Six miles from earth." The reader gets a clear image of something being very high above the ground. When the author says, "loosed from the dream of life," the reader gets a slight feeling of death or a vision of someone dying. The fourth line, "I woke to the black flak and the nightmare fighters," brings the reader visual, auditory and tactile imagery. The reader can picture someone waking up to shrapnel, from an exploding bomb, flying by their head. One can hear the gunfire of the, "nightmare fighters," along with the exploding shells. The reader also gets a tactile image when the author says, "I woke up," because everyone knows what it is like to wake up from a sleep. In the fifth and final line the reader gets a very graphic visual image. The reader can picture someone's body being so destroyed that instead of removing the body from the turret the soldiers must wash it out with a hose.

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

Paraphrase: The first stanza in about how someone or something was sleeping until it got very cold and froze to the outside. Then it's about how it was shot out of a plane way above the earth and it saw all the fighting in the sky. Lastly it talks about how it had to be washed out of the barrel of a gun as if it were a casing.

Personification is the major technique which is used in describing Death as a human or enemy. The Next War discusses the subject of death through its personification, stating “we’ve walked quite friendly up to Death; Sat down and eaten with him, cool and bland” (line 1&2), expressing how soldiers have befriended death, describing it as an “old chum” (line 10). The Charge of the Light Brigade names the valley the soldiers are charging into as “the valley of Death” (line 7), and like The Next War, Death is personified through the use of imagery such as “the jaws of Death” (line 19) and “the mouth of Hell” (line 20). The subjects Death and Hell are capitalised materialising these objects and thus similar to in The Next War, allow Death to be viewed in a far more vivid manner. The personification of death in these poems enhances the importance and immense impact of which Death plays on a soldier’s life when at

Over time, an abundant collection of literature has been written in reference to the Vietnam Conflict. For instance, “The Man I Killed” written by Tim O’Brien, and “The Man He Killed” written by Thomas Hardy, were written about the feelings behind a killing. Even though both, O’Brien and Hardy show how guilty and remorseful the narrator is now feeling that his ‘foe’ is left lying dead, O’Brien illustrates a soldier who is struggling to recover. Whereas, in Hardy’s poem the narrator is semi-recovered by the end of the poem. Each piece depicts the nerve-racking experience of killing another human being, however each author’s strategy of coping differs.

the notion of seeing your brothers die in front of your bare eyes, and not be able to do anything to save them. My poems ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ and ‘Dulce Et Decorm Est’ explains the conflict of life bereft of war, as opposed to that involved in it, they are also poems that i wrote from first hand experiences. ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ is a poem that describes the inevitable mass killing of soldiers at war whilst ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ brings to life the reality of combat in war - the physical and emotional state soldiers find themselves in before, during and immediately after a sudden gas attack. Both these poems will paint a vivid image how and what the soldiers had to go through every day, and make you all understand how the war is from the perspective of a solider that has been through gas attacks, whaling shells, gun shots, to see your brothers go to sleep and never wake up, and the struggles men have to go through after the war, assuming that they do

Randall Jarrell was one of the few poets of his time to vividly and accurately depict the horrible and confusing reality of war. His experience in the military provided him with a deep understanding of both the mind of a solider and a civilian. With this understanding of the human consciousness, Jarrell deeply explores the actions, feelings, and interactions of people in times of war. Through his sympathetic, psychological portrayal of a diverse range of narrative personas in his dramatic monologues, Jarrell displays the dehumanizing forces of war.

This poem describes what horrific things he saw as he tried to survive the battle. The poem is about how brutal war can be. It goes to describe the fatigue of the soldiers, the attack of the green sea, and death of one of his comrades. First, the narrator of the poem describes the fatigue of the soldiers. The soldiers seem deformed and distraught.

The theme is evident throughout the poem, starting with the title, as it includes the word “death.” The subject sees death as an inevitable part of his life, and most likely joined the war after “[he] balanced all [and] brought all to mind” and viewed his life as “The years to come seemed to waste of breath, / [and] waste of breath the years behind” when compared “with [the speaker’s new] life, [and] death.” This leads to an interpretation that he has accepted that death is imminent and in fact, is welcoming it since he “know[s] that [he] shall meet his fate/ Somewhere among the clouds above.” There are other interpretations to this poem, but the readers can discern this: death is certain and

It’s at this point that the poem begins to break down, again resonating with the narrator’s mentality to expose his frantic state. Gas-shells begin dropping down onto the company as they scramble to fit their masks and helmets. Here the poem loses its sense of pace and goes ballistic, losing its rhyming scheme and even repeating the word “drowning” to achieve some pattern. This, being a rather real perception how one would react to the gory sight of a comrade melting before your gaze. The poem perfectly reflects the narrators’ efforts to collect his thoughts and sanity with its pacing and

The juxtaposition between the first two stanzas adds to the effect intended upon the reader by Siegfried Sassoon. He wants us to feel the harsh reality of war; cold, unjust, harsh and depressing, and the image of a happy young man driven to suicide by war certainly emphasizes this point. This jarring contrast makes the boy’s death a lot sadder and brings out sympathy in the reader.

Imagine being in your mid 20’s and having to leave your whole life behind to go fight in a questionable war, to be a soldier on behalf of unknown people. Imagine having to go into combat each instance knowing that death awaits the soldier who makes a mistake. Imagine what it must feel like to see the blood of your friends, your enemies and even that of your brother spilt in front of your very own eyes. Visualize having to spend days and hours in camps doing nothing but waiting and plotting to kill an enemy who is just as determined to kill to save his life as much as you are determined to kill him to save your own. In war, Death stands near, waiting to consume and rid this world of any soldier at any give time. The themes running through “THE