Part one of term paper
From my mother's sleep I fell into the State, And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze. Six miles from Earth, loosed rom its dream of life. I woke to the black flak and the nightmare fighters. When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose. "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" by Ra ...

Part two of term paper
... is positioned in the ball turret which was an enclosed bubble with a swivel gun in the belly of the plane. This poem reads like a nightmare or dream being told by a soldier who has been taken from his childhood and thrown into war. The soldier describes the fear of awakening from the naive state of childhood into the preeminent likelihood of his death during the "State" of war (line 1). He describes the disconnection he feels from Earth and what he calls it "dream of life" as if life onl ...