Analysis Of Death Of The Ball Turret Gunner By Randall Jarrell

Death in life

Have you ever considered the thought of dying, or better yet being dead? In “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner,” Randall Jarrell introduces his readers to an airman. Jarrell takes his readers into the airman’s experience and days in the devastating World War II. In the beginning of the poem the author states how the airman felt safe in his mother’s womb, but later fell into the States. It seems as if he is a child who has been thrown to the Federal government. Jarrell is portraying how instead of being born into a world of love and peace the airman was awakened into a nightmare of the real world.

First, readers are thrown into the life of a World War II Ball Turret Gunner. The action takes place in a World War II American bomber

the airman is a bomber who goes into battle. Just like any bomber the airman’s job has been to defend the aircraft from the attacking enemies. He has no protection and his main concern is saving his own life and the aircraft. Jerrell portrays how the men fighting on both sides are innocent just like a baby. Everything Starts off in the turret then the fighter’s enemy planes came. The airman ends up dying and instead of being buried with respect for fighting for his country his life is cut short like an aborted fetus. He is washed away with steam hose and forgotten like he never mattered. The federal government perpetuates a heroic death, but Jerrell is really telling readers that there is nothing glorious about an airman’s

“mother” functions as a metaphor representing a mother and her child, a sense of childlike innocence. The image of “wet fur” is the inside of the airman’s flight jacket. Another image is one of a melancholy, innocent, frightened animal. The airman hunching in the belly of the plane shows readers how scared and helpless he was in the tight sphere six miles up in freezing temperature. Abortion comments on the waste of war. The birth and womb imagery used by Jarrel puts this theory of innocence in the reader’s mind. Just like a baby is innocent oblivious to the evils that happen, Jarrell ideas are combined to paint an image of violence, heightening the reader’s perception of the horror’s of