Social Pressure In Randall Jarrell's 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

In fact, this also applies to the situation of understanding what social conformity is. This subject has been around for centuries, forcing many to behave in a certain way that the society expects. The influence of peer pressure is still a topic has an impact to the world, especially the adolescents. The “[s]ocial psychologists have suggested that one core function of compliance and conformity is to maintain group harmony”(“Social Influence and the Brain:Persuasion, Susceptibility to Influence and Retransmission” Cascio,Scholz,Falk) and this applies to many individuals who value public opinions more than their own. They seek to be “good” people and make an effort to follow the trend of the crowd. More often than not, this also relates to the confidence level of an individual, “If those others agree with one’s beliefs, one gains confidence in them; if they disagree, one loses confidence” (“Conformity,” Levine). This is indeed what many people face today from all different phases of life. Daisy, one of the characters in the book The Great Gatsby, is a perfect example of a person soaked into social conformity. From the beginning of her marriage life with Tom to the end of the book, she progresses into immoral stages of life. Day after day she conforms herself into a world filled with corruptions, such as adultery and murder. Although, she is an adult, she is a character that is stuck in a stage that her age group have already

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

First, Jarrell uses imagery abundantly throughout his lyrical poem. The character used in the poem is compared to what we would believe to be an animal, with fur of some kind. The comparison to an animal hunched over with frozen fur gives us, as readers, a visualization of how small the Ball Turret Gunner is and allows us to understand that the men in these positions are nervous and in high altitudes, thus more than likely frozen with sweat. Additionally, Jarrell specifically names six-miles above the earth which engages readers in knowing that this is not a little mission, as they are miles above earth’s surface. Also, the gory ending of washing the flesh out of the turret with a hose enables readers to visualize how this situation typically pans out. Simply due to the goriness of the situation, readers are likely to remember this than if the process were to be sugar-coated and made to be more pleasant. Imagery paints this five-line poem into a story-board and gives the setting a whole new meaning.

In Solomon E. Asch’s social pressure experiment, subjects were shown a line on a piece of paper and instructed to choose a line of the same length on a different piece of paper with two other lines of varying lengths. All but one of the subjects in each experiment group were instructed to choose the wrong answer on purpose, unbeknownst to the last member. The last member of the group, who did not know

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.

There are three elements employed by Randall Jarrell in his poem, “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner,” which illustrate the cycle of life and death of the gunner. The utilization of rhythm, use of imagery, and sequencing of events profoundly impact the development of the theme which conveys sending young people to fight a war is essentially ending life before it begins. Each element is evidenced in all five lines of the one stanza poem. Understanding these elements allows readers to grasp the troublesome concept of death through warfare in just five short lines.

There is a fundamental human need to belong to social groups especially if people were to live and work together, it is likely that they need to agree on common beliefs, values, attitudes and behaviours in order to get along and fit-in. Thus, we learnt to conform to rules of other people, the more people see others behaving in a particular way or making particular decisions, the more likely people will feel obliged to follow the suit. This is called conformity and can be defined in different ways, Aronson, Wilson & Akert (2014) stated it is the changing of one’s behavior due to the real or imagined influence of other people. According to Deutsch and Gerard (1955), social influence should be distinguished into two types, the informational social influence and normative social influence. The occurrence of social influence has implied to many real life events, which has drawn many researchers to attention. This has lead many researchers to design distinct experiments to try and understand the cause of the conformity, whether conformity is situation dependent, and whether we are able to resist social influences.

In today's day and age contemporary society's are built upon the thought of citizen conformity to a prescribed set of values and norms to. This idea of complies to social standards makes one think as to how these norms of fact society as a whole and an individual. The main driving component which draws people too conformity are the desire to be excepted in certain status groups. People fear that if they do not conformity is norms that they will be breaking the social contract therefore been shunned by society at not being able to achieve their personal goals. Further analysis of these forces for conformity in contemporary society it will be shown that these forces produced negative ethical conduct and

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.

American psychologist, Rollo May, once said, “the opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it is conformity.” This philosophy is supported by Solomon E.Asch’s in his article, “The Opinions and Social Pressure.” In the article, Asch conducts a series of experiments that centralize on the influences of social pressure and the extent to which an individual, when confronted by the differing opinions of a majority, will surrender their perceptions to others. Asch argues that although humans believe they’re independent in their decision-making, they tend to pay heed to the majority because they fear the scrutiny of others and being an outcast in the group.

The article “Opinions and Social Pressure” by Solomon E Asch is about how people conform to social norms and how social learning is a large part of everyday life. Asch begins by explaining how social norms and pressures allow people to learn how to function within society from learning a language to understanding cultural aspects. The majority of the article describes series of experiments in which subjects are asked to match lines of the same size. The experiments presented throughout the article describe different settings and independent variables. The majority of the experiments conclude that people conform to the majority's opinion to different degrees regardless of whether it is correct or not.

So why do we conform? Gross. R, et al (2000) in ‘2nd edition psychology a new

Conformity theory is used to explain why people eat bugs, smoke cigarettes, enjoy boring tasks, following trending wardrobe styles, and under appreciate enticing options (Jones & Mills, 1999). These tactics are performed in an effort to maintain consistent views among group members and reduce the number of attitude conflicts and tension (Matz & Wood, 2005). Conformity will be defined as changing one’s own response to be consistent with other group member’s responses (Asch, 1955b). Asch’s work supports the notion that people will change their views and behaviors in order to fit in with a group. They may even go as far as to express a clearly wrong response if those around them are in agreement (Asch, 1956). While research has shown short-term conformity effects; there are few studies that look at the lasting changes that follow the act of conforming. The goal of this study is to see if conformity expressed in groups can translate into private acceptance that will be carried on after the initial study is conducted.