Ball Turret Gunner

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"The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" by Randell Jarrell is up to interpretation, but it carries the same dark tone as "The Cask of Amontillado" by Edgar Allen Poe. "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" has to be carefully picked apart to grasp its dark tone. It touches on the feelings one feels at war and in death. Whilst "The Cask of Amontillado" carries an ironic tone with it.
"The Cask of Amontillado" starts with an alluding back story and a prologue. Poe’s word choice like borne, utterance, and vowed, makes the dark tone come together. The story also has a revengeful attitude, Montresor is seeking vengeance against Fortunato. While "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" starts with a metaphor for a mother and her fetus. The speaker's word choice like nightmare died and hunched makes the dark sorrowful tone come through.
The speaker in "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" compares war to being a fetus in a mother's womb. The speaker uses metaphors like “hunched in its belly”, “from my mother's sleep”, and “loosed from its dream of life” to convey the idea that a turret gunner is like a mother and her unborn baby. At the very end of the poem the speaker says, “they washed me out of the turret with a hose”. If the speaker is comparing a mom and her fetus this is a metaphor …show more content…
the setting is in the catacombs, the tone is dark. The catacombs are described as having mold in the walls, damp, and dark. A catacomb is “an underground cemetery, especially one consisting of tunnels and rooms with recesses dug out for coffins and tombs.” While "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" setting is in war specifically in a plane as stated in “Six miles from earth”. The turret gunner sits inside a dome and shoots. He sits in such a way that he looks like a fetus. In both settings, characters are variable and are in fighting situations. There is an obvious reason of why the setting would affect the
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