The Death of a Ball Turret Gunner by Randall Jarrell is a super short poem but packs a powerful meaning. Randall was clearly saying that war is like a paradox or in other words like an abortion. He explains the ball turret area as womb like enclosure in the plane's belly when he states, " From my mothers sleep" and " I hunched in its belly." Told from the gunner's point of view of his last moments of life. "I fell into the state" the gunner never got to live to his full potential.The different state provides a death womb for the gunner. Going "into state" the gunner "loosed from its dream of life" knew his death was upon him not even having a fighting chance. Waking up only to die among the "black flak and the nightmare fighters." His body only to be washed "out of the turret with a hose." The poem leaves a scar on peoples mind that war is a result of wasted life.
Randall Jarrell wrote this poem while he was in the military working as a control tower operator. In this case Randall had firsthand experience on what it is like to be in the army watching young soldiers going out to war. "Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life" creates an image of the fears and mortality going into war that these soldiers had to face. The author has empathy and sensitivity for the young soldier that went out to his death bed. Randall started this poem off so innocent by comparing to childhood "from my mothers sleep" drastically taking a turn for the worst to violence of "When I died they washed me out with a hose." The man that fights for our country and freedom will always be remembered even if it was a wasted war. .
The general ideal of this poem compares to most of the text we've read in class because.
most of them are related to war such as, Game, Noiseless flash, and Speaking of Courage. Another broad thing to compare this to the rest is they are all pretty negative.