Death of the Ball Turret Gunner
Title: The title foretells the death of a person who operates the Ball Turret on a plane. Ball Turrets were the gunners on the bottom of planes during World War II.
Paraphrase: The beginning of the poem discusses the awakening of the narrator and the narrator falling into the military. It then discusses the narrator inside the belly of the airplane. It is a cold place. The plan is roughly six miles above the earth and the narrator no longer is in the dream state of those on earth. The narrator awakens to a gun fight and is subsequently killed. He is washed out of the Ball Turret.
Connotation: The entire poem uses images of birth to juxtapose the harshness of the military. Jarrell personifies “the State” or military. This gives it a sinister like quality. The image of the Ball Turret gunner “in its belly” is like a child in the womb. The image skews our view of pregnancy. Jarrell further talks about the “wet fur froze.” This image shows the animalistic nature or war and this metaphor makes us question the human nature of such a state. The “Six miles from earth” is both an image of distance and an image of the distance the narrator is from reality. The next line’s abrupt start “I woke to black flak” gives us a sudden jolt and lets us into the last few minutes of the narrator’s life within his own “nightmare”. The last image is so calmly stated it jars us. “When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.” is so simply stated the reader becomes enraged at the fact that less is made of the situation than needs to be. The poem ends with this image of the Ball Turret gunner’s abortion from his womb.
Attitude: The author’s attitude is calm and slightly negative. He does not yell at us about the injustices of war but whispers it quietly in our ears. This whisper seems to awaken a roar in the soul of the reader.
Shifts: There are shifts in every single line. The beginning of each line is peaceful and then the end of the line slams the reader. “From my mother’s sleep” is a soft and sweet visual. The end of the same line is “I fell into the State”. Jarrell uses the harsh image of a fall to juxtapose the earlier peace of the line. This pattern is repeated with each line.
Title: We now see the Death of the Ball Turret gunner is also his abortion
Theme: War and human beings are natural ends of a spectrum. They must both be present but are innately opposites. War robs us of our humanity.
The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner By: Randall Jarrell
From the title we soon realize that this poem will be both about war and the death it causes. This death is both physical and psychological. Jarrell’s title takes us back to World War II and the hay-day of the “Ball Turret Gunner”. These were the men on the bottom of planes who lived in a bubble like rotating machine gun device. Jarrell starts us off in the sweet comforting image of “my mother’s sleep”. This lulls the reader into a false sense of security. Within the same line Jarrell jars us into the inhumanness of war. “I fell into the State” is the first shift within the poem. Jarrell has a shift in every single line. The reader is never truly stable but instead balances between the two extremes. He makes us fall “into the State”. The State becomes the personification of the military machine during World War II. We march into the second line to feel a soft maternal image. “I hunched in its belly” give us a sweet image of a baby in the womb. Though we often see the womb as a safe place Jarrell soon shifts us back into the war machine. We are now an animal with “wet fur froze”. Jarrell takes the image of the womb and shifts it on its ear. People in states of war are now animalistic. He seems to play with the juxtaposition and shifts in every line. Line three starts with a simple image of “six miles from earth” and then tells us we now “loosed from its dream”. We awaken to “black flak” and the “nightmare” soon continues as we feel the angst of the Ball Turret Gunner’s last minutes. The “nightmare” is far from over. Jarrell informs us of the Ball Turret Gunners death, “when I died”, and leaves us with the cold lasting image at the end of this poem. The Ball Turret Gunner states “they washed me out of the turret with a hose.” This is the inhuman end to a life and it is the lack of respect for life that begs us to question war’s humanity. War is therefore likened to an abortion. The person is no longer of use so he is flushed out. Jarrell’s lack of outrage seems to outrage us. The cold image further drives home the fact that war is the antithesis of what it means to be human. War and human beings are natural ends of a spectrum. They must both be present but are innately opposites. War robs us of our humanity. Jarrell reminds us of our humanity with a whisper and the image of a “nightmare”.