Ball Turret Gunner Poem Tone
A great example of good word choice is in randall jarrell s the death of the ball turret gunner to understand the context of this short poem one should know what exactly a ball turret gunner is.
Ball turret gunner poem tone. Randall jarrell the death of the ball. The death of the ball turret gunner from my mother s sleep i fell into the state from my mother s sleep i fell into the state the academy of american poets is the largest membership based nonprofit organization fostering an appreciation for contemporary poetry and supporting american poets. The ball turret was a feature of the bomber aircraft a b 17 or b 24 made of plexiglass and set into the belly of the plane. Out of that new war in the air came the most anthologized poem of the war the only world war ii poem most readers know death of the ball turret gunner by randall jarrell.
Already a well known poet and professor jarrell had enlisted in the army air corps in 1942 but washed out of the flight part of his pilot s training program. Just look at our friend the haiku only seventeen little syllables but sound often plays a big part. Just because a poem is short that doesn t necessarily mean it has less going on in the sound department than longer poems. The state in line 1 gets a lot of attention first line end word capitalization.
The death of the ball turret gunner by randall jarrell speaks of both the futility of life and the callousness. Hunched upside down in his little. Randall jarrell was addressing the horror and destruction cruelty of war also is voice of the death soldier during wwii. If you have read a poem that deal with war you.
Paragraph 3 paragraph 2 the title the death of the ball turret gunner is telling us the poem is about war. When i died they washed me out of the turret with a hose. Jarrell who served in the army air forces provided the following explanatory note. In these poems the narrators uses imagery diction and sorrow to show the brutality and sorrow of war.
In wwii some planes would have machine gunners in their bellies facing the ground enclosed in a glass ball. From my mother s sleep i fell into the state and i hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze. Here are some ways sound is working in the death of the ball turret gunner. A ball turret was a plexiglas sphere set into the belly of a b 17 or b 24 and inhabited by two 50 caliber machine guns and one man a short small man when this gunner tracked with his machine guns a fighter attacking his bomber from below he revolved with the turret.
Six miles from earth loosed from its dream of life i woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.