"The Death of the Ball Turrett Gunner" by Randall Jarrell

The terminal of the Ball Turret Gunner

From my mothers sleep I feral into the State,

And I hunched in its belly till my nonsensical fur froze.

Six miles from Earth, loosed rom its dream of life.

I woke to the black flak and the nightmare supporters.

When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner by Randall Jarrell is a numbers about

a soldier dying in the ball turret of a genius plane during what was most

likely World War II. The poem tells of the fear of teenaged soldiers being sent

to war and their thoughts of dying.

The poem is told from the point of view of a young fighter aboard a

bomber during World War II. The fighter is positioned in the ball turret

which was an enclosed bubble with a pivot gun in the belly of the plane.

This poem reads like a nightmare or dream being told by a soldier

who has been taken from his childhood and thrown into war. The soldier

describes the fear of awakening from the wide-eyed state of childhood into the

preeminent likelihood of his death during the State of war (line 1).



He

describes the disconnectedness he feels from Earth and what he calls it dream

of life as if life nevertheless existed in birth and death (line 3). When he awakens

to black flak and nighmare fighters he seems to intend that all that lies

between birth and death is war (line 4).

The theme to this poem emerges in the last line with almost a exculpation that

he not be forgotten. When he says they washed me out of the turret with

a hose he implies that there is nothing left including the memory of...

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