Summary Of Death Of The Ball Turret Gunner By Randall Jarrell

Death of the Ball Turret Gunner is set in a World War II bomber, more specifically the “belly” of the bomber. While the poem itself uses the word belly to describe the ball turret, the way Randall Jarrell, the author, describes the setting makes it feel more like the ball turret is the “womb” of the plane. And I think that he wrote this poem intending readers to see that. In the very first line of the poem, he mentions the soldier’s mother and sets the stage by mentioning her and making that idea fresh in our minds. Jarrell uses the idea of a mother and writes the bomber as if there is a parallel between a mother and the bomber. He creates and uses those differences between mothers and bombers to create a sense of irony. I think the biggest

In fact, the war preceding the war in Death of the Ball Turret Gunnner, World War I. This poem isn’t a celebratory poem either and doesn’t shy away from the grim reality of war. The setting shows that well. The poem begins with the soldiers trudging through mud and filth towards their encampment half-dead and exhausted. In the first stanza, the setting feels much like a graveyard with its “haunting flares”. “Our distant rest” while most likely referring to the soldier’s sleep could also be referring to their death. “Men marched asleep” adds to the creepy graveyard-like setting by making the soldiers seem like the walking dead. The action picks up in the next stanza when a gas bomb is dropped on the soldiers. Panic ensues as they rush for gas masks. One soldier didn’t get his mask in time. In the last stanza, we seem to have moved off the actual battlefield and into the author’s dreams about the poems events. The author implies that he’s had this dream many times before, but even though it’s been stated that he’s dreaming it’s hard to tell what was the dream and what is real. I think the author does this to show the soldier’s traumatized mind. The soldiers in this poem aren’t anything like they are in movies or recruitment posters. These are real soldiers, traumatized by the war and death surrounding them for the entirety of their