What Is The Ball Turret Gunner Compared To
Just like jarrell mentioned in his note it brings to mind a child in the womb.
What is the ball turret gunner compared to. Think of it this way. When this gunner tracked with his machine guns a fighter attacking his bomber from below he revolved with the turret. Enotes plot summaries cover all the significant action of the death of the ball turret gunner. Ball turret gunners on b 17 bombers were protected only by a glass bubble jutting out from the bowels of the plane.
The literal sense is that he is in the middle of the ball turret. Words that develop the metaphor are belly mother life the death of the ball turret gunner. Permanently fixed and unable to be retracted there was no hiding from enemy attack. In the death of the ball turret gunner.
And you thought your mom was tough. The metaphorical sense is that he is in an ominous horrible place the belly of the beast the place of his fears. The ball turret gunner was one of the most dangerous assignments in world war ii. Complete summary of randall jarrell s the death of the ball turret gunner.
The death of the ball turret gunner is a fantastic example of what poetry is capable of. The death of a soldier is being compared to the death of an aborted child. What comes to mind when you picture this gunner hunched in the belly of the bomber. So the ball turret becomes a metaphor for the womb.
It was characteristic of jarrell to see the soldier as a sacrificed child and he relates this to maximum effect in the. It was an enclosure that at any time could become an airman s. Hunched upside down in his little sphere he looked like the fetus in the womb. That would make the bomber the mother.
A ball turret was a spherical shaped altazimuth mount gun turret fitted to some american built aircraft during world war ii the name arose from the turret s spherical housing. If you had to write something in prose dealing with the complexity and emotion of big subjects like life death and war it would take you way more than 5 sentences to get it done. There is another metaphor at work here. In the poem s implied metaphor the ball gunner is compared to a n.
It was a manned turret as distinct from remote controlled turrets also in use.