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Ball Turret Gunner And Dulce Et Decorum Est Comparison

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“When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose" (“Ball Turret Gunner” 5). This is a line from the poem, “Death of a Ball Turret Gunner.” It shows how hopeless, terrifying, and tragic war really is. Both of the poems, “Death of a Ball Turret Gunner” and “Dulce et Decorum Est” give a rational explanation of how war can be life changing and how the speakers perceive war as a challenging experience. “Death of a Ball Turret Gunner” is about a drafted soldier that is stationed inside the ball turret of a plane. He awakens to the sound of nightmare fighters attacking and before he knows it, he has been brutally murdered. “Dulce et Decorum Est” is about a group of soldiers heading back to camp to rest when suddenly they are attacked by bombs and gas. In his dreams, the speaker has repetitive flashbacks pertaining to what he has witnessed and wonders what people find good in war, pain, and death. In both instances, the speakers recount their war experiences to show that they feel war is extremely unfair and …show more content…

Literally, he is miles above Earth, but figuratively, he is speaking of being far from everything he knows and has always known. War has changed him and all of his previous life seems so far away. Each line in the poem begins happy and shifts toward despondency. Jarrell uses the belly of the ball turret as a metaphor for the womb; the womb being the under attack of the nightmare fighters. The womb births the gunner into death. Jarrell also uses ‘the State’ as a representation of the speaker’s state of mind. The speaker is in an emotional state of war, death, and innocence. When Jarrell says, “…till my wet fur froze” (“Ball Turret Gunner” 2), he is actually cold and freezing, but figuratively, he is referring to how lonely he is and having no one to care for him. In “Death of a Ball Turret Gunner,” Jarrell uses metaphors to emphasize the hopeless attitude of the

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Nobody said much. The whole platoon stood there watching, feeling all kinds of things, but there wasn't a great deal of pity for the baby water buffalo. Curt Lemon was dead. Rat Kiley had lost his best friend in the world.” This quotation seems to capture the feeling of war, and grasps the concept of what goes through a soldier's mind.

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The metaphor "an ecstasy of fumbling" depicts the chaos and confusion of the soldiers at this moment. The repetition of "Gas! GAS!" creates a sense of urgency and terror as the soldiers try to save themselves from the poisonous gas. The third stanza describes the death of a soldier from the gas attack. The metaphor "watch the white eyes writhing in his face" creates a haunting image of the soldier's pain and suffering.

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Djanie 1 Pfeffel Djanie Michael Rambadt Eng 102 11/17/16 Death and Its Impact on Characters in Tim O’Brien’s ‘The Things They Carried’ and Elizabeth Bowen’s ‘Demon Lover’: War and death are themes that often come together in many literary works. Tim O’Brien in his works The Things They Carried and Ambush together with Elizabeth Bowen in her text Demon Lover explore these themes.

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Because he uses such explicit details, it signifies this particular experience was horrendous for a young soldier like himself to witness. This appalling experience definitely left a harsh impression on his memory of the Vietnam war, causing him to remember his time in the war in a horrific fashion. The narrator also explains, "His face was suddenly brown and shining. A handsome kid, really. Sharp gray eyes, lean and narrow-waisted, and when he died it was almost beautiful, the way the sunlight came around him and lifted him up and sucked him high into a tree full of moss and vines and white blossoms" (67).

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459 Words | 2 Pages

In this poem Long Soldier structures her poem so that it creates a box shape which ironically is what the poem is about. She writes, “This is how you see me the space in which to place me” (pg. 8). This poem creates, literal, imagery of land and territory. We can also see how Long Soldier feels as though people place her in a box whether it be physical, reservations, or metaphorical, Indigenous stereotypes.

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Both Ted Hughes and Wilfred Owen present war in their poems “Bayonet Charge” and “Exposure”, respectively, as terrifying experiences, repeatedly mentioning the honest pointlessness of the entire ordeal to enhance the futility of the soldiers' deaths. Hughes’ “Bayonet Charge” focuses on one person's emotional struggle with their actions, displaying the disorientating and dehumanising qualities of war. Owen’s “Exposure”, on the other hand, depicts the impacts of war on the protagonists' nation, displaying the monotonous and unending futility of the situation by depicting the fate of soldiers who perished from hypothermia, exposed to the horrific conditions of open trench warfare before dawn. The use of third-person singular pronouns in “Bayonet

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474 Words | 2 Pages

“Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” is the old lie of glory told to sacrifices of war. Erich Maria Remarque, author of the historical fiction All Quiet on the Western Front, tells the tale of Paul Baumer, a German soldier fighting on the western front in World War I. Baumer struggles to realize the purpose he is fighting for, and the justice behind it. Remarque demonstrates how the promised glory presented to soldiers is not worth the sufferings of war in All Quiet on the Western Front. Soldiers face countless horrors on and away from the battlefield. Corpse rats and rats that feasted on human flesh plagued the trenches and “attacked 2 large cats and a dog, bit them to death and devoured them” (Remarque 103).

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Rhetorical Analysis Essay for ‘The Things They Carried’ Tim O'Brien's “The Things They Carried,” tells a story about the lives of young soldiers during the Vietnam War. The narrator tells his story from first person, marking all his adventures and experiences of him and his platoon throughout his time serving in the war and after it. In his chapter, ‘In the Field,’ O’Brien uses metaphors, diction, and syntax to convey that experiencing direct contact with death brings you closer to life’s reality. O’Brien introduces the chapter with describing the search for Kiowa’s body, who was killed by a grenade. He conveys that “the rain was the war and you had to fight it”.

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You slip out of your own skin, like molting, shedding your own history and your own future, leaving behind everything you ever were or wanted to believe in. You know you're about to die. And it's not a movie and you aren't a hero and all you can do is whimper and wait” (O’Brien 200-201). The last sentence makes the writers point very clear when he talks about how war films may have a happy ending, but Vietnam never did. The writer makes it sound as if fighting in this war is comparable to a death sentence.

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Through Farquhar, Bierce shows how soldiers on both sides were merciless in their acts, a fact that would never be mentioned if Romantic writings were all that remained from this era. Fast forward several decades, World War Two has consumed the planet, and officers are just as cruel as they were in the Civil War. “Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” by Randall Jarrell, announces, through the form of a poem, the callousness of the military in WWII. A man thinks he is safe under the protection of the State, but the poem tells that, “When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.” (“Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” by Randall Jarrell).

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499 Words | 2 Pages

In Tim O’Brian’s book, The Things They Carried, he tells the story of Tim who serves in the Vietnam war and is immersed in a war filled with death. O’Brian through his theme of death helps create a story that illustrates the horrors of war, and shows how soldiers carried death both physically and psychologically. For instance, O’Brian conveys how closely war and death are associated together. On page 77, O’Brian writes, “At its core, perhaps, war is just another name for death, and yet any soldier will tell you, if he tells the truth, that proximity to death brings with it corresponding proximity to life” (77). This quote illustrates, how by coming close to dying, one can appreciate life that much more.

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750 Words | 3 Pages

By manipulating the war setting and language of the novel Heller is able to depict society as dark and twisted. Heller demonstrates his thoughts of society through the depicted war. In the novel, the loss of personal identity in the soldiers lives. Furthermore, The idea is that supports how much value is placed upon a human life and shows the evils and cruelty of war is related The Ball Turret Gunner by Randall Jarrell, in which a soldier who spends his entire life in war only to die the same position he came into the war “fetal” state; just to be disregarded and buried in a whole.

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1210 Words | 5 Pages

Using loaded words is a common theme throughout the book and the poem helping us understand the emotions the soldiers were feeling, while also helping us understand the connection between human, nature, and feelings. In the book Divergent they describe,“His eyes are a striking bright blue,

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993 Words | 4 Pages

Both Dulce et Decorum Est and Mametz Wood present the incompetent results of war. Dulce et Decorum Est indicates the horrible facts and deaths in war. Moreover, Mametz Wood highlights how precious life is and how easily it can be lost as a result of battle. In this poem “Dulce et decorum Est”, Owen portrays the deadly effects of conflict through the use of metaphor: “as under a green sea, I saw him drowning”. Here, he describes the pain of the gas attack.

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982 Words | 4 Pages

He then contrasts between the bomber’s view to the civilians’ view from the ground. The bombers view is recognized from a plane filled with ammunition. This suggests the bombers are carefree of their acts committed, but the civilians are petrified for the safety of their lives due to the uncertainty of the attack which is to occur. The effect on readers is that while reading the poem they begin to notice the different views of the bombers and civilians while experiencing war. Also, the readers tend to realize the savagery conveyed by the

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