Admittedly, there are fetal images in this poem: "hunched in its belly," "my wet fur," and "loosed from. . . ." Even the title allusion, "ball turret," suggests the rounded uterus of a woman heavy with her child. How do these fetal images uncover an "anti-abortion" position? The crux seems to lie in the tone through the first few lines and ghastly image at the close. The images and tone in the first several lines of the poem suggest a "state" of some security--the security the fetus "knows" in its uterine "home." The sudden jolt of "nightmare fighters" suggest a horrifying intrusion into the security of the uterus. And the closing image, ". . .they washed me out of the turret with a hose," could easily be construed as a DNC process where the results of inception are literally washed out of the mother. Images and tone can be persuasive in convincing some readers to "make the meaning" that Jarrell is horrified by abortion and is underscoring his horror by using brutal images from war.
However, these same images could be construed very differently. Consider: war is state sanctified brutality. The state ("I fell into the State"--notice the use of the capital letter here) approves war and has no compunction about putting young men and women in harms way. Therefore, a reader could make the case that Jarrell's poem is essentially confirming the State's role in allowing abortion to happen. If the state allows war, then why should the state interfere with the choice to terminate a pregnancy. Undoubtedly, Jarrell would have had some awareness of the multitude of horror stories that women had recounted concerning "back door abortions" throughout most of the 20th Century. A generation before Jarrell, Ernest Hemingway explored the issue of abortion in his short story, "Hill Like White Elephants." So it is not unthinkable for a serious writer to not only explore, but even advocate for, a political position on abortion.
There still lies another approach to this entire "debate" on whether "Death of a Ball Turret Gunner" reveals a position on the issue of abortion. As noted in the head notes to our text, Jarrell had experience in the US Army Air Corps in the early 1940s. He moved before the end of the war into a role as air traffic controller. This information is critical to this third option: a standard "practice" by poets from the 16th century forward is to force similarities between two things that seem obviously dissimilar. In fact, this literary device used by the metaphysical poets of the 17th century is called a "conceit." For example, John Donne compares the love of God to a rape in his sonnet, "Batter my heart three-personned God." George Herbert compares his priestly collar to a choke collar in his poem of the same name. Could Jarrell have been exploring a conceit in his poem and not be advocating one position or another? Is it possible that given Jarrell's observations of numerous B-17s and B-21s though his experiences during World War 11, that the conceit of a ball turret and a uterus suggested itself? After establishing that one comparison--between the swollen uterus and is sheltered inhabitant with the ball turret gunner, also protected, yet vulnerable--the rest of the poem simple evolved from his personal experience in the Air Corps.
Consider the "wet fur" metaphor early in the poem. The war planes of WW II were not pressured like today's commercial aircraft. Therefore, when a plane was "six miles from earth," the personnel aboard this plane would have experienced thin air and extreme cold. Standard dress for many airmen during the war was a coat that was fur-lined. Also, with the extreme cold and heated breathing of the airmen, there would have been condensation, like all of us have experienced when exhaling on a cold day. This condensation would have dampened, e.g. wetted, any airman's fur lining and collar.
The reading of the poem seems obvious: there is no political position in "Death of a Ball Turret Gunner" supporting choice and supporting fetal "rights." The poem is more akin to the generation of Shakespeare, Donne, Herbert, Marvel, and others who relished an opportunity to force seemingly random items together and make the similarities between the two foreign objects compelling to readers. (811 words)
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