Disscussion Board - Assignment Example

A Brief Analysis of Randall Jarrell’s “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner Who is the speaker? To what does hecompare himself in the poem’s first two lines? What words establish this comparison?The speaker is an ordinary person who dies in the end. However, the actual poet is a WWII veteran (“Randall Jarrell”). In the first two lines, he compares himself to a soldier of the Air Force. In the first line, “From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State,” the speaker is trying through the phrase “fell into the State” to say that he was actually peacefully taken care of by his mother before he enlisted or was forced to enlist in the Air Force in order to serve the State or his country.

Moreover, the phrase “my wet fur froze broke” helps establish this comparison as Air Force personnel wear a fur-like uniform.2. Contrast the speaker’s actual identity with the one he creates for himself in lines 1–2. What elements of his actual situation do you think lead him to characterize himself as he does in these lines?The poet, Randall Jarrell, actually served in the Army Air Corps in the Second World War (“Randall Jarrell”). He actually finished university with a bachelor’s and master’s degree and he was able to publish his book of poems before he joined the Army Air Corps.

However, the character he portrays himself as in the poem is that of a person who has never done anything in his life except become a soldier and serve the State all his life until his death. Perhaps, the poet makes such a comparison in order to show the reader that despite his being a poet, during the Second World War, what mattered to him was survival as a soldier and that perhaps what consumed him was the idea of his own death and nothing else. Thus, he forgot about everything else and just focused on being a soldier.3. Both this poem and “Dulce et Decorum Est” (p. 492) use figures of speech to describe the horrors of war.

Which poem has a greater impact on you?It is Randall Jarrell’s “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” that has a greater impact on me because of the cleverness of the poet in expressing the same dishonor and disgrace in war in such an astounding brevity. The futility of war is expressed in the whole poem especially in the end when the dead soldier was just “washed…out of the turret with a hose” and with even just he alone to speak about it. This is clearly the unjust reward of devoting his whole lifetime to the service.

Works CitedJarrell, Randall. “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner.” 2006. Welcome to the Rich Geib’s Universe. 25 June 2013. “Randall Jarrell.” 2013. Poets.org. 25 June 2013.