Death Of The Ball Turret Gunner Analysis

As Adolf Hitler and his National-Socialist party rose to power, along with the Japanese Imperial Army in the 1930's, the fear of a second World War was quickly becoming a reality. In 1941, that reality became a living nightmare, and once again, the world was engulfed in war. World War II would soon become the most costly and intense war in human history due to its many facets: immense human suffering, fierce indoctrinations, and the use of new and extremely devastating weapons such as the machine gun, and the atom bomb. "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" gives a small insight to such chaos. It is a poem written by Randall Jarrel while he served in the Army Air Force during World War II. It is a poem about the thoughts the gunner might have felt as he carried out his mission, and is probably based on firsthand experience with a ball turret or a gunner.
The explosion of flak shells has awakened him from this dream, and his reality has now become a "nightmare". The word "nightmare" is used to describe the gunner's sheer terror of being shot at and the feeling of terror when one is having an actual nightmare. The use of the word "nightmare" conveying two different types of terror, actual and surreal, shows how fearful the gunner is. The "nightmare fighters" add to the terror, meaning they cannot be seen as if they arent real but are doing actual harm, therefore making them seem almost invulnerable. Flak is an explosive fragmentation shell fired from anti-aircraft artillery on the ground. By giving the explosive flak color "black", the author is comparing the flak to the Grim Reaper, the morbid symbol of death who is commonly represented as a figure in a black cloak. He is trying to say that death is imminent to the gunner in this "nightmare" in which he cannot wake up or