The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner (1945). Detailed description

The last of the poems in Little Friend, Little Friend is perhaps Jarrell’s most well known, a poem horrifying in its simplicity. Jarrell added his own note of explanation for the ball turret:

A ball turret was a Plexiglas 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. 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 foetus in the womb. The fighters which attacked him were armed with cannon firing explosive shells.

The hose was a steam hose. (Jarrell’s note) In “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner,” a soldier- child narrates his own shattering death in the style of a journalist relating an everyday event. It is strewn with carefully crafted references to motherhood, childhood, birth, dreams, and death—recurrent themes throughout Jarrell’s poetry. Each image tells multiple and easily recognizable stories.

The reference to “wet fur” (2), also present in “90 North” and referred to as “wired fur” in another poem from this collection, “Second Air Force,” is filled with multiple meanings. With nature representing life, Jarrell uses the image of the wet fur found on blind and dependent newborn animals to convey the vulnerability and helplessness of the gunner. Premature babies are also often covered in downy hair, suggesting that this soldier was ill prepared to enter the world created by the state.

On a more literal level, Air Corps personnel wore jackets with fur collars that often became wet with sweat. Jarrell takes this frightened young soldier on a journey above the earth, not into a dreamlike place in the clouds, but away from it; not awakening from a nightmare, but awakening to it. This progression, though horrifyingly sudden, startles the speaker with the recognition that his insignificant life is over.

The brutality of the last line is created not just by the image of the soldier’s remains—remains that could be so unceremoniously washed down a drain with a common hose—but also by the abrupt change from two lyrical lines of imagery, lines that could just as easily have taken the story in a heroic direction but instead move to a staccato and sickening end. Jarrell told the story of the gunner in a longer, less brutal, and more detailed poem, “Siegfried,” which also appeared in Little Friend, Little Friend.

For Discussion or Writing
1. Read a number of Wilfred Owen’s and Siegfried Sassoon’s World War I poems, which can be found on the Internet in a number of places, including http: //www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ltg/proj ects/jtap/ tutorials/intro/. If you explore this site, you will find full texts and actual copies of manuscripts in the poet’s hand, such as the Owen’s manuscripts found here: http://www.hcu.ox.ac.uk/jtap/ warpoems.htm. Next, read Jarrell’s “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” and his poem “Siegfried.” Examine how Jarrell’s poetry differs from the poetry of the two World War I poets. Which aspects have been retained? Why do you think the poetry about these two wars differs?

2. Though it was one of his more famous poems, Jarrell did not think it among his best. Knowing what you do about his life and other poetry, discuss why he might have felt this way.