What does Jarrell want to suggest with this line from The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose?

“When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.” A steam hose is used to remove his remains. Also suggests abortion.

Was Randall Jarrell a ball turret gunner?

Poet and critic Randall Jarrell was born in Nashville, Tennessee. As a child, he spent time in Los Angeles, where his grandparents lived, and he would later write movingly about the city in “The Lost World,” one of his best-known poems.

What is the meaning of the poem The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner?

“The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” uses intense metaphors of wombs, dreams, and awakenings to evoke the speaker’s innocence—and his terrible death. Right from the start, the poem metaphorically connects the speaker’s experience as a ball turret gunner to the experience of being inside a womb.

What does Jarrell mean by mother’s sleep?

In the first four lines of the poem Randall Jarrell says “From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State[…]” which means that the soldier are now being taken care of by the US government. It also means that as they are being born, they are being exposed to new things.

What kind of poem is the death of a ball turret gunner?

‘The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner’ by Randall Jarrell is a five-line poem that is contained within one stanza of text. Jarrell chose to write this piece in free verse. This means that the lines do not contain a specific rhyme scheme or metrical pattern.

What is the dominant imagery in The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner?

Jarrell himself said the gunner in the turret was like a child in a womb and he relies heavily on that imagery in the poem. Line 1: “Mother” really jumps out in line one. Lines 2-5: The description of the gunner in the ball turret as “hunched in [the] belly” of the bomber makes the turret into a metaphor for the womb.

What does a ball turret gunner do?

Armed with two 50-caliber machine guns and capable of rotating 360 degrees, the ball turret gunner was responsible for protecting the otherwise-exposed underbelly of the flying fortress.

What is the state in the Death of the Ball Turret Gunner?

The poem begins with the speaker “[falling] into the State,” and “hunch[ing] in its belly.” In the context of the poem, the State is the bomber itself—with the speaker scrunched up in the ball turret on the underside, or belly, of the aircraft.

Could a ball turret gunner bail out?

The tail gunner, waist gunners, and ball turret gunner bailed out. The ball turret gunner first had to exit the ball turret and hook up his chute as he did not have room in the ball turret to wear it.

How does the ball turret gunner died?

The poem is about the death of a gunner in a Sperry ball turret on a World War II American bomber aircraft. When this gunner tracked with his machine guns a fighter attacking his bomber from below, he revolved with the turret; hunched upside-down in his little sphere, he looked like the fetus in the womb.

Who is the author of the death of the ball turret gunner?

There have been many anti-war poems, and one of the most widely anthologized is Randall Jarrell’s ‘The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner.’ In this lesson, you’ll learn more about the poem and have a chance to test your understanding with a quiz.

What’s the difference between a ball turret and a gunner?

The words “turret” and “gunner,” especially together, are likely to confuse the majority of readers. The title refers to a ball turret, a feature of a bomber aircraft. This was like the B-17 or B-24. The ball turret was made of plexiglass and inset at the bottom of the plane.

What kind of gun was in a ball turret?

He finished the war as a control tower operator, so he saw the aftereffects of air combat on a regular basis. In a note, Jarrell explained that a ball turret is, ‘. . . a plexiglass 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.’

What did Randall Jarrell do in the military?

Randall Jarrell joined the military during the Second World War as part of the Army Air Corps. He finished the war as a control tower operator, so he saw the aftereffects of air combat on a regular basis.