Interpretations of the The Death of the Bull Turret Gunner by Randall Jarrell

357 Words1 Page
bulb-icon

Recommended: Comparing and contrasting poems

Interpretations of the The Death of the Bull Turret Gunner by Randall Jarrell

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:

The author begins the poem with the phrase "From my mother's sleep I fell into the State"(1). This I believe refers to the reflection of the gunner's likeliness to his mother's womb, being crowded in the ball of the plane. The "State" refers to the pilot being drafted into the military. The government drafted most men during this time period and in this poem I think that the speaker was drafted. Like most men, he probably felt it was his duty and honor to serve his country. The author in reference to the second line "And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze" (2) might refer to fur around the neck of the pilot to keep him warm from the freezing winds of the sky when hunched down in the ball of the plane. When the author writes "Six miles from earth" (3), I imagine the pilot dropping the plane down from the sky very quickly to hit his target below. I can see the speaker hanging from his little ball not bound by the aspirations that others seek in life, which would be what he is referring to when he says, "loosed from its dream of life" (3). Another thought or interpretation from this line might be that the speaker feels he is not responsible for the lives he is about to destroy on the ground. The following line the

Garcia 2

Show More
Related

  • Death Of A Ball Turret Gunner Essay

    678 Words  | 2 Pages

    While other soldiers were buried after they fell in battle on the ground the gunner in the turret was instead washed out with a hose. “When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.” vividly puts the idea in the reader’s face that there was no dignity or honor in his death. The irony in the poem is that the gunner was fighting for a grand cause in a massively important conflict yet the man died in a horrible and repulsive way. Ultimately The Death of a Ball Turret Gunner was a poem more about reflection and thought than about answers. It sought to cope with tragedy by talking about it rather than rationalizing

    Read More

  • 'An Old Soldier Cleans His Rifle For The Last Time'

    1162 Words  | 3 Pages

    For instance, “smell of gunpowder” (Magnus, 6), which is repeated multiple times, is a demonstration of how much the soldier values his war memories, for the solder describes the smell as “stimulating” (Magnus, 8) and “life-giving” (Magnus, 7). At the same time, as the soldier describes war in an enumeration towards the end of the poem, the audience learns his sadness and regret in face to the fact that “No one comprehends a soldier’s work anymore” (Magnus, 28). This enumeration, however, is used to recreate the images that the soldier experienced during his service so that the audience would feel the intensity of war. In addition, the assonance in “knobby bones” (Magnus, 4), on top of emphasizing the bold character of the soldier despite his age, evokes an image of an old, forceless man, which fits well with the beginning of the poem, in which the soldier is portrayed as weak and unenthusiastic.

    Read More

  • The Narrator And The Artilleryman Analysis

    563 Words  | 2 Pages

    1. My initial impression is that the story was going to have a lot of action in it. My initial impression is based on the title.

    Read More

  • Thom Gunn’s In the Tank - A Manifestation of the Human Consciousness

    2359 Words  | 5 Pages

    The title of the poem acts as an initial introduction to the tone and language used by Thom Gunn, and gives many hints into the complexity of subject matter.  A “tank,” is an informal term for prison.  The implication that Gunn suggests from the title is that the poem bases itself on a first hand-narrative of some aspect of prison life, recounted by a person with personal experience of life ‘in the tank.’  The tone of the poem is established by Gunn before any material is even considered. An informal sense of expertise is entrusted in the narrator, due to the fact that he (presuming that the narrator is a man, like the subject of the poem) has a unique perspective in which to operate.  The audience yields to the narrator’s insight and accepts his dialogue as factual, since it is an implie...

    Read More

  • Next to of Course God America I by E.E. Cummings

    641 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...ctuation and a run on word cummings has portrayed a confused speechmaker who has put little though behind his words. In the beginning section of the poem, cummings uses no punctuation except for the quotation marks, an apostrophe and a question mark. This is so the lines run into each other, creating a sense of confusion. The lines in the poem are a collection of clichés that have been used throughout the years describing patriotism for America and are phrases that have been used in everyday life. cummings is discussing feelings towards a nation's attitude of war, through quotation marks and clichés. It is a difficult to understand why a nation would send troops off to "the roaring slaughter." This poem suggests the question of whether a country has nothing better for its young men to do than to send them off to die at the hands of a senseless act such as war.

    Read More

  • Dulce Et Decorum Est - Critical Response

    1127 Words  | 3 Pages

    Firstly I will be exploring metaphor as it is used so much in this poem. The first metaphor which I will examine is “Haunting Flares” on line 3 of the first stanza. This quote has so many connotations, my first opinion on this was that the flares which the enemy are firing to light up the battlefield are said to be representing the souls of the soldiers fallen comrades. This could also be said to represent the power the enemy has on their own mortality as the bright flares would light up the battle-field exposing everything to their view, this indicates that the enemy always seem to have power upon the soldiers, almost godly. The second metaphor which I will explore is: “An ecstasy of fumbling” in line one of the second stanza.

    Read More

  • Analysis of Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen

    477 Words  | 1 Pages

    poem expresses to the reader, the pain of war and what it is like to

    Read More

  • Sharing Detachment Behind a Wall of Glass

    874 Words  | 2 Pages

    While James Wright’s poem “Lying in a Hammock” accentuates the hopelessness in the quickly fleeting moments in time, and Franz Wright’s poem “Flight” exposes the consequences of a distant father on a son longing for a relationship he never had, the two poems are linked by the underlying theme of detachment. It is evident, by juxtaposing these two works, divided by literary devices such as style or syntax, the underlying themes are circumstantially shared and induced by the hardship of life itself.

    Read More

  • Loss By Randall Jarrell Analysis

    160 Words  | 1 Pages

    In the poem Losses by Randall Jarrell i believe that jarrel is trying to say that there is sadness and confusion during war. In the poem it says “it was not dying: we had died before in the routine crashes and our fields”(line 2). In this line it expresses the theme of of sadness and how people people can't accept their death and what's happening. The soilders also seem to be used to other soilders dying regularly like a routine thing because it is common that people have gotten used to it.in another line it asks”why are you dying? We are satisfied if you are: but why did i die?”(line 31-32). Which shows the confusion of why people are dying when even they don't really understand why they are. It also ask if they are dying why do they also

    Read More

  • Channel Firing: The Violent Human Condition

    842 Words  | 2 Pages

    The poem is broken up into nine stanzas, each containing four lines. The rhyme scheme of the first stanza is abab format. The rhyme scheme continues the back-and-forth rhyme, eventually ending with a qrqr rhyme scheme for the very last stanza. The rhyme scheme continues without repetition outside of each stanza. This leaves the poem without a sense of resolution. Just as the rhyme scheme never comes to a concluding couplet, the guns never stop, even as the dead men lay down in their coffins once again. The perpetual need for war and bloodshed is as ongoing as the rhyme scheme, ever changing with new advances. Humans grow and adapt to war, making it more violent than before. This continuous growth is shown through the abab scheme as it makes it’s way through the different letters of the alphabet. The setup is similar however the rhyming, and resources, differ from each stage prior and after. The violence will not end until God blows the trumpet; which he admits he may never

    Read More

  • The Harsh Reality of War in Wilfred Owen’s Poem Dulce et Decorum Est

    1056 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Disabled Wilfred Owen Essay

    1144 Words  | 3 Pages

    Owen begins the poem with a depressing description of a man in a wheeled chair “waiting for dark”. The use of the word ‘dark’ gives connotations of death, implying that he’s waiting for his death to come. It also conveys a sense of isolation and sadness as the soldier no longer has a family. The mention of ‘sleep’ in the last line of the stanza can be an indication that death is near, since death is sometimes described as eternal sleep. Personification is used a...

    Read More

  • Analysis Of The Last Laugh Poem

    1240 Words  | 3 Pages

    The tone is bitter and intense in a realistic way. It is achieved by the vivid and gruesome images in the poem. Wilfred Owen 's use of imagery in this poem is by depicting emotional, nightmarish, and vivid words to capture the haunting encounters of WWI that soldiers went through. In the first stanza, Owen depicts his fellow soldiers struggling through the battlefield, but their terrible health conditions prevent them from their strong actions in the war. When Owen says, “Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, knock-kneed, coughing like hags” (lines 1-2). This provides the readers with an unexpected view and appearance of soldiers, as they usually picture as strong, noble, and brawny-looking men. Soldiers sacrifice themselves to fight for their country and are exhausted from their unhealthy lifestyle. In lines 7-8, “Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots of gas-shells dropping softly behind,” they have lost the facade of humanity and their bodies are all wearied and weak on their march. This reveals a glimpse at the soldiers’ actions, as well as inferring to a psychological effect of the war. Then in line 5, “Men marched asleep,” the author is making abnormality to be one of the major purposes of the war, that it

    Read More

  • Walt Whitman Style Analysis

    1067 Words  | 3 Pages

    ...e who are killed at war were usually buried at the battle field in which they died in. Whitman wrote, “I rose from the chill ground and folded my soldier well in his blanket, And buried him where he fell.” (25) Overall, Whitman does a great job of portraying the honest brutality and depressive nature of war, especially the Civil War, where it was a battle between countries. The personification of the Civil War was a great touch and a fitting addition to Whitman’s poem. The gloom of the war and subject matter of course, offered the reader a glimpse of what was to come of the narrator. The war gave every soldier the stark feeling of hopelessness at times, though the bonds they made with each other were what got them through the rigors of war. Now that the narrator’s comrade was dead, the poem’s tone gave the idea to the reader that the soldier had little to fight for.

    Read More

  • What Is The Theme Of Testimony By Seamus Heaney

    1349 Words  | 3 Pages

    With this being said Heaney uses similes and denotations throughout his poem to put in a sense of tone in the poem to help the readers get a better understanding of what the people were going through when they would see soldiers walking about. According to Dictionary.com (“Simile”, 2016). “A simile is a figure of speech in which two unlike things are explicitly compared.” This is being used in line 18 where it says “standing there like youngsters” (Heaney, n.d.). This interprets how men working would pause and observe what was going on and the soldiers marching by just like kids would do when they see something remarkable. Heaney also uses Denotation. Which according to Dictionary.com, “Denotation is the explicit or direct meaning or set of meanings of a word or expression, as distinguished from the ideas or meanings associated with it or suggested by it.” This is being showed in the poem throughout various lines. It’s being showed when he writes, “They would have heard the screaming, / Then heard it stop and had a view of us / In our gloves and aprons / coming down the hill” (lines 6-9), this evokes an image showing that what is being told and said is what is truly happening. That the soldiers were so close to them that they could hear the slightest scream of a pig being

    Read More

More about Interpretations of the The Death of the Bull Turret Gunner by Randall Jarrell

Open Document