Analysis of Randall Jarrell's The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner
Many of the great poems we read today were written in times of great distress. One of these writers was Randall Jarrell. After being born on May 6, 1914, in Nashville Tennessee, Jarrell and his parents moved to Los Angeles where his dad worked as a photographer. When Mr. and Mrs. Jarrell divorced, Randall and his younger brother returned to Nashville to live with their mother. While in Nashville, Randall attended Hume-Frogg high school. Randall showed his love for the arts while in high school by participating in dramatics and journalism. Jarrell continued his career in the arts when he wrote and edited for Vanderbilt’s humor magazine, The Vanderbilt Masquerader. After earning his graduate degree at Vanderbilt, Jarrell accepted a teaching job at the University of Texas. While teaching at Texas, Jarrell met his future wife, Mackie Langham, a fellow English teacher. In 1942, Jarrell left home to join the Army Air Corps as a flying cadet. At about this same time, Randall’s first book of poetry was being published. When Jarrell wrote home, his family often said his letters were, “confined and dreary.” When Jarrell could not quite cut it as a cadet, he switched to being a navigation control tower operator. As a control tower operator, Randall began to write about the pilots, navigators and gunners of the war. This is probably when Jarrell wrote one of his most famous poems, “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner.” After being discharged from the army, Randall went back to teaching. Randall’s love for teaching showed by his famous quote, “if I were a rich man, I would pay money to teach.” Randall did have some psychiatric problems though. Many people thought Jarrell committed suicide when he was hit by a car on a dark road in 1965. People assumed suicide because at the time of his death Randall was in treatment for slitting his wrists in an attempt to kill himself. Most of Randall’s poetry reflects what he saw and experienced during the war.
The structure that Jarrell uses in his poem, “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner,” is quite unique. This poem consists of five uneven verses. All of these verses are combined into one stanza. The metric pattern in this poem is very hard to detect. All of the lines begin with at least two anapestic feet followed by at least one iambic foot. This poem i...
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...between abortion and a gunner being killed in the belly of a plane. During an abortion, after the baby has been killed in the womb, the doctors, “wash” the dead fetus out of the mother with a hose. In the first part of the fourth line of this poem when Jarrell writes, “I woke to the black flak,” the reader heres the alliteration of the, “ck,” sound. With the repetition of this sound the reader can almost hear gunfire. Although there is no rhyme scheme to this poem, end rhyme takes place at the end of the first and fifth lines.
The last thing one would analyze when explicating this poem would be the theme. Analyzing the theme of a poem consists of two things. First one would have to look at the topic of the poem. In this poem the topic is obviously the gunner getting drafted, the horrifying experiences of the gunner, and the death of the gunner. The second thing one would have to look at would be how the author feels about the topic. In this poem the author obviously feels that life is a very fragile thing. Whether you are a baby in your mother’s womb or you are a gunner in the belly of a bomber, Jarrell shows us just how fragile life is and how easily it can be taken away.
Poetry has been used for centuries as a means to explore emotions and complex ideas through language, though individuals express similar ideas in wholly different forms. One such idea that has been explored through poetry in numerous ways is that of war and the associated loss, grief, and suffering. Two noted Australian poets shown to have accomplished this are Kenneth Slessor with his work ‘Beach Burial’ and John Schumann’s ‘I Was Only Nineteen’. Both of these works examine the complexities of conflict, but with somewhat different attitudes.
Every year we celebrate a holiday at the end of October involving costumes, candy, and pranks. Can you guess which holiday I am talking about? Of course you can! Halloween is one of the biggest holidays of the year ,second only to (in my opinion) Christmas. We follow many strange traditions on Halloween, but why? Why do we dress up? Why do we get candy? And what is the meaning of the phrase “ Trick or Treat”?
The Death of a Ball Turret Gunner is a poem about many different subjects. In just it’s short five lines one can see that it has depth far beyond the actual length of the poem. The author Randall Jarrell was born in Nashville, Tennessee on May 6, 1914. He went on to teach at the University of Texas just before joining the US Air Force. Jarrell did write some before he joined to military but his most popular works (including this poem) were written after his service in the Air Force and his work was heavily influenced by it.
Poetry in my opinion is a writer describing, life experience, feelings, things he has seen and perhaps things he would like to see or experience. In Randall Jarrell's poem "The Death of the Bull Turret Gunner," there are many ways this poem maybe interpreted. I really did not understand the poem until I read it a few times. This is what I believe the writer is saying:
To fully understand this poem one must first know what a purpose of a ball turret gunner is, and the dangers that this particular position presented to the man inside the ball turret. Like any gunner on an aircraft the ball turret gunner is changed with defending the aircraft from attacking fighters, but the role of a ball turret gunner is extremely important to the survival of the slow and unmaneuverable bombers more so than almost any other position.(Bassett)
Civil rights activist, Martin Luther King, Jr, in his powerful speech, “I have a dream” indicated that even though we own the Emancipation Proclamation, we also had been suffering the discrimination. King’s purpose is to invert the current unfair situation and make the Negros have the same rights as white people. He adopts a poignant tone in order to claim that Negros should have their own rightful place and appeal the Negro people who have the same inequity experiences.
Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech describes the past, present, and future lives of African-Americans. Racism of African-American was a huge issue of the time, which created kairotic moment for the speech and motivated Dr. King to demonstrate the racial problems of the time. The propose of Dr. King’s speech was to inform people about racial equality and fairness by providing hope and a vision of the future. Dr. King’s speech was intended for different types of audience especially for racial supremacists and African-Americans who were discriminated against.
The purpose of visual imagery in poetry is to help get the poet’s message across in a language that is strong, vivid and very visual. Visual imagery evokes the emotions of the reader by appealing to their senses and through this helps enhance the mood of the poem. The mood implied in “Daddy”, by Sylvia Plath, is that of aggressive, anger, irritable from one that has a childlike devotion to one of severing due to abandonment. In “The Colonel”, by Carolyn Forche, is one of controlled terror, intimidation, torture, and literal dismemberment. In “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner”, by Randall Jarrell, the story sets the mood of melancholy at the hands of the state. Each poem a dictatorial figure whether it be the father,
Each holiday serves to strengthen pride in their own histories and cultures. As people continue these celebrations, they are reminded of who they are, where they came from, and their society’s beliefs and values. Along with this, cultural awareness is also promoted. People from countries all around the world are beginning to celebrate Halloween, and more and more are becoming increasingly aware of Day of the Dead.
...n with great emphasis, this statement gives the listeners the desire to change "today" instead of continuing the discrimination. Additionally, due to King’s great use of anaphora which strongly emphasized these words, the speech rightfully earned itself the title "I Have a Dream."
This poem is about a ball turret gunner on the bottom of the plane. It was very cold under the plane, and these gunners would oftentimes fall asleep during their flight and wake up in the middle of the battle. When it became time to land, the landing gear on the plane would sometimes malfunction and the plane would have to do a belly landing. This means that the turret gunner on the bottom of the plane would be killed and his remains would be scattered all across the runway. Jarrell explains all of this by saying, “I hunched in its belly til my wet fur froze. Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life, I woke to black flak and nightmare fighters. When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.” This poem presents a strange theme about war. Jarrell seems to suggest that life doesn’t matter in
The author of the “I Have A Dream” speech is Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. King, known for his work in Civil Rights during the 1960s. In this informative speech, Dr. King inspires individuals to have a change in both white and black citizens during the Civil RIghts era in the United States. Moreover, the premise of the speech is that both sides of the discussion must accept change in a non-violent yet effective way. He spoke about the injustices of segregation and discrimination of black citizens that was occurring in our nation. As he opened, “I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation,” he explained what he was there to do for all citizens. He is
It is a shock when the soldiers suddenly spring into action at the start of the gas attack and the responder are given a chance to realize that the soldiers are really only young men, forced to mature through mental and physical burden. Owen conveys the vastness of the gas attack by employing a simile in “As under a green sea, I saw him drowning” the word ‘sea’ accentuates the thickness of the gas and the suffocating lack of air for the soldier. The dying of the man is personalized by positioning the responder in first person; “He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.” to create an emotional rapport between the two to elevate the feeling of loss. “If in some smothering dreams you too could pace behind the wagon that we flung him in” Owen creates empathy and pity from the responder through embedding them into the scene. Owen criticizes the loss of innocent life in “incurable sores on innocent tongues” to condemn the use of propaganda to attract innocent youths with false glory at stake. The poem moves from the battlefield, to an attack and the death of the man, to his dying and finally to the message “The old lie: It is sweet and honorable to die for one’s
Chaos and drudgery are common themes throughout the poem, displayed in its form; it is nearly iambic pentameter, but not every line fits the required pattern. This is significant because the poem’s imperfect formulation is Owen making a statement about formality, the poem breaks the typical form to show that everything is not functioning satisfactorily. The poem’s stanza’s also begin short, but become longer, like the speaker’s torment and his comrades movement away from the open fire. The rhyming scheme of ABABCDCD is one constant throughout the poem, but it serves to reinforce the nature of the cadence as the soldiers tread on. The war seems to drag on longer and longer for the speaker, and represents the prolonged suffering and agony of the soldier’s death that is described as the speaker dwells on this and is torn apart emotionally and distorts his impressions of what he experiences.
I Have a Dream was a speech given by Martin Luther King Jr. This speech was delivered on the afternoon of Wednesday, August 28, 1963, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The speech was intended for the 250,000 civil rights supporters that attended. The speech addressed the topic of equality for the African Americans and the White people. The purpose of the speech was to address the issues of segregation and racism as a whole. King speaks about the issues of racism and segregation in America during the 1960’s. He encourages the use of non-violent protests and to fight for equality to help America solve the issue.