ipl-logo

Death Of The Ball Turret Gunner Analysis

844 Words4 Pages

This disheartening conceit, that eternally battles time for relevance, illuminates lack of importance people place on living beings, and on life in general. Humankind has lost sight of the original divinity of existence a
Randall Jarrell, in his chilling anti-war poem “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner,” emphasizes the stark contrast between the warm comfort of the speaker’s previous life and his cold, painful sufferings as a gunner at the warfront, in order to condemn the government’s impassivity towards fallen soldiers, treated as replaceable parts in war’s perpetual assembly line.
In the first sentence of the poem, Jarrell displays the speaker’s transition into an emotionless soldier at the manipulative hand of the government. At the beginning …show more content…

Forced to drown his own emotions in the freezing waters of his pointless existence, the soldier is ripped from the the calming "dream of life" and forced into the state's cold, metallic underbelly. He resurfaces from his sudden shove into adulthood at the warfront, only to be murdered by the spray of bullets and the "nightmare fighters." The entirety of his life was cut off - too early - before he received the chance to live. Broken, the soldier becomes another replaceable part in the destructive war machine. This description paints the scenes of the poem as they happen, the powerful connotations of the words battling against each other, and to the grievance of the reader, the negative feelings prevail. This battle illuminates the brutality and fear experienced by soldiers, in WWII, during their final moments on Earth - their fear, sadness, and horrified disgust all hidden between the lines of these two sentences. Foreshadowed by the soldier's machine like tone, the speaker alludes to the fact that he will fight for his life, and

Show More
Related
1891 Words | 8 Pages

This passage shows how the soldiers are emotionally and mentally drained by the horrors of war, and how they feel disconnected from the world they once knew. The

Read More
599 Words | 3 Pages

More than 5,000 families in the United States, have sedulous relative fighting for our country’s freedom. Many of those families have not the slightest idea of what war is like, and all of its physical and mental effects. The author uses descriptive words to take the reader on a mental voyage. The soldier keeps a conversationalist tone and uses rhetorical strategies such as imagery and rhetorical questions to show how miserable he is living. The e-mail begins with the solider mentally describing your living area; he describes it like a million dust particles that are glued to you.

Read More
1571 Words | 7 Pages

This metaphor displays his uncertainty as per his crucial part in that moment in time. The soldier pictures himself as the hand on a clock, subject to the inevitable force of a clockwork motor that cannot be slowed or quickend. He realises that he does not really know why he is running and feels “statuary in mid-stride”. However, towards the end of the poem, all moral justifications for the existence of war have become meaningless- “King, honour, human dignity, etcetera Dropped like luxuries in a yelling alarm”, which is extremely dismissive of all the motives people provide for joining the army, explicitly stating that those motives do not justify and do not withstand the war. Disorientation is also highlighted in the line “Stumbling across a field of clods towards a green hedge That dazzled with rifle fire” where the confusion between the natural world and man-made world is expressed.

Read More
644 Words | 3 Pages

Perhaps those most affected by war are those who lost their lives fighting for their cause. However, the integrity of those who died can sometimes be compromised, which Randall Jarrell illustrates in his poem “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” which captures the last moments of a soldier’s life in World War II.

Read More
990 Words | 4 Pages

Through centuries of great wars and battles, history has displayed brave men and women who have fought for their countries. These audacious people have helped propel countries for the greater good. However, the weight and responsibility, of the war, takes a heavy toll on soldiers that is often overlooked. Tim O’Brien, author of the novel The Things They Carried, records his stories, and the stories of his fellow soldiers during the war. However, three of these soldiers are affected in an outlandish way.

Read More
869 Words | 4 Pages

The soldier himself is frightened on why he could not save him which haunts him in his dreams as he says “In all my dreams/ before my helpless sight” is how every time he dreams he sees the soldier and he cannot control it causing him to think of it every night frightening him everyday. Soon he will feel that the dead person wants revenge for his death as the soldier states “he plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning”, The dead soldier always comes into the narrator's dream wanting revenge as he chokes him as how he was being choked by the gas clouds and then drowning as how the dead soldier drowned in the green sea of chlorine gas. The horrors of war is what scares the soldier even after the war. At first soldiers imagine themselves as heroes creating them eager and excited they are until they finally get to the front and see no man's land. No man's land is usually bumpy with shell holes and dead trees that are either broken or burnt.

Read More
275 Words | 2 Pages

The devastation behind the soldier stood on the edge of his mind, but nevertheless was not in his thoughts. The man standing in front of him dominated his thoughts and instigated a war deep within the soldier. The man was plain on all accounts; he was middle-aged, wore glasses, had a receding hairline, but his image was now stained in the soldier’s memory. This man merely wanted to get by, most likely to confirm the death of a loved one, but no matter how many times the soldier thought about it, he would never know exactly why. The only knowledge that burdened the soldier was his duty, and his duty was to keep this man at bay.

Read More
432 Words | 2 Pages

Beach Burial is an elegy by Kenneth Slessor, published in 1944 as a tribute to the soldiers who fought in World War 2. Beach Burial tells the story of the extreme loss of life and the crude, makeshift burials for soldiers. I believe the purpose of the poem was to appreciate the people who took the time to bury soldiers and put them at peace while also exploring the fruitless nature of war. The poem has a reflective, haunting tone and with the extensive use of poetic devices and language techniques it reflects on the futility of war and the severe loss of life. Onomatopoeia, oxymorons and metaphors have been used to support the theme that war was a grim, fruitless event in which many soldiers were killed.

Read More
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.

Read More
1227 Words | 5 Pages

Basically everything in a war could look beautiful in humans eyes, but every soldier hates war at the same time. The truth reached by the reader from this contrast is that why some might like going to war and what makes soldiers to keep going in

Read More
1090 Words | 5 Pages

The way Owen crafts the poem clearly shows the ‘pity’ that he emphasizes throughout his poetry. His choice of language and structure illustrate his experience and emotions regarding the tragedy of war. Also, the image of horrendous conditions and psychologically disturbed soldiers continuously remind

Read More
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

Read More
1007 Words | 5 Pages

Peacefulness against chaos, beauty against ugliness. One time is between personification and inhuman feelings to describe the brutality of nature. In “Disabled” other people in the town think the soldier as an animal. They also see him as a burden and a unwanted responsibility. They look down upon him and pity him but do nothing.

Read More
1935 Words | 8 Pages

In this poem Dreamer, the author which is Sassoon show how the soldiers are people too. It is written during the First World War. In this poem the anger is focused on those most directly responsible for the soldier’s fate. Society frequently depicts war as an exciting adventure offering opportunities to prove one 's power and win glory. But, says Sassoon in presenting his theme, war is a brutal ordeal for facing bullets and artillery bombardment--and the sight of bloody uniforms, torn limbs, and twitching bodies.

Read More
800 Words | 4 Pages

The diction of the poem illustrated the theme “war isn’t as heroic and glorious as it appears to be” by using descriptive words that elicited strong

Read More

More about Death Of The Ball Turret Gunner Analysis

Related Topics

Open Document