Research paper (The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner by Randall Jarrell, 1945) - Essay Example

The message that Jarrell is trying to convey is presented in only five lines, descriptive and abstract five lines. Brief as it is, it evokes a powerful, vivid, and moving message. The tragedy of war and lives lost in battle is depicted, leaving the readers a poignant recollection of the cruelty and obscenity of armed conflict. His concise tribute to the victims of war is achieved through his mastery of paradoxism, metaphor, even hyperbole. Thus, it unfolded various conceptual interpretations of the prose.

The opening line speaks of birth. He fell from his mother’s womb not into ordinary human life but into the womb of the State (Wood). This is during the wartime period when men were drafted for military service. A man conceived in the protective nest of his mother’s womb, ironically delivered into the chaotic world of government servitude. A moment of stillness and sleep superseded by terror and anguish. Going into the battle is opening to the possibility of losing his life in the name of his motherland.

And to lose his life in the hands of the enemy. The thought of whether such action is his personal choice comes to mind. It appears as if he does not want to go, for the threat of being killed in action is possible (Pericles). Sleep and State accords the commanding words in this line. Sleep is to comfort, and State is authority. The analogy of an innocent life and horrible death of the machine gunner as expressed by Randall Jarrell. From the beginning he is moulded for only one purpose, and all that happens to him is for this public usefulness.

He exists only to be a victim (Fein, 1961). The birth, according to Dawson, may be seen as the rebirth of initiation into a mature vision of reality and evil. The time between birth and death is lost. The poem presents a man who seems to have lived in order to die (Ferguson, 1974). It encompasses a single moment in the gunner’s life- his identity, his innocence and when he was robbed of his life