SOURCE: Bassett, Patrick F. “Jarrell's ‘The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner’.” Explicator 36, no. 3 (1978): 20-21.

In the following essay, Bassett analyzes the imagery of “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner,” underlining a thematic link between “sleep, animality, and death” in the poem.

Randall Jarrell's poem “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” synthesizes three apparently dissimilar images to convey an anti-war message. Jarrell links the imagery of sleep, animality, and birth as he awakens the reader to the nightmares of a man/child at war.

The poem, an evocation of the horrors of airwar battle, opens ironically with an image of sleep. The poet fashions his sleep image to work in two ways: First, sleep is a state of benumbed consciousness; secondly, sleep is the agent of a nightmare consciousness. Jarrell suggests that only a mother who is “asleep,” caught unawares and undefensive, could allow the State...