Jarrell was born in 1914, the first of two sons born to Owen Jarrell and Anna Campbell Jarrell. While Jarrell himself never saw combat as a serviceman during World War II, those who did have found his war poems to be very true to life. But in “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” Jarrell also draws upon Freudian criticism in its use of womb imagery and Marxist criticism in its portrayal of an all-powerful “State” controlling the life of the helpless individual to create a complex, realistic portrait of war. Certainly the death portrayed here is mechanized and impersonal. Many Modernist works addressed the alienating effects upon the individual of a mechanized and impersonal society. Indeed, the grim tone of this poem places it firmly in the Modernist movement of literature. While the people and events of World War II are commonly found in Jarrell’s poetry, this poem is unique for its lack of wit. Despite the variety of Jarrell’s writing (he produced not only poetry but also fiction, criticism, and children’s literature), “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” is his most widely known work.
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