Living through Others' Experiences!
             Randall Jarrell was born in Nashville, Tennessee in 1914. Jarrell earned bachelor's and master's degrees from Vanderbilt University. In 1942, he enlisted in the Army Air Corps, but soon left the Air Corps for the army experience, which provided much material for his poetry. Some people might interpret their readings differently as to what the author of this writing was really trying to express when he wrote it. Knowing very little about the author, other than his name, I had a completely different interpretation of what Jarrells poem "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" meant. Having no background information on Jarrell and his views when he wrote that poem, my interpretation of that same poem, my interpretation of that same poem was based on my ideas and on what I understood of it by viewing it through my eyes.
             The first time I read the poem, I thought about a baby inside the woman and when it is that the fetus is actually considered a form of life. Many people disagree on which period of time the fetus actually becomes someone with life. Some people believe that the baby has life since it starts forming in the woman's body. On the other hand, other people don't consider a baby inside a woman's body to have life until it is born and can breath the oxygen outside like the rest of us. The first sentence in the poem, "From my mother's sleep I fell into the state"(2635), means that in the mother's unconsciousness the baby became weak. That the mom didn't know that something was beginning to go wrong with the baby. The second line "And I hunched in it's belly till my wet fur froze"(2635), means that the formation of the baby started to lose its shape as well as its signs of life. The baby just hanged in the mother's belly without any motion like that of a baby kicking or moving around when it's health...