Death Of The Ball Poem Analysis

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The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner

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Hence, it is free of artificial expression. It has rhythm and a variety of rhetorical devices used for sounds, such as assonance and consonance. This poem presents a perfect example of a ballad —a folk-style poem that typically narrates a love story. The language of this poem is simple. It contains twelve stanzas, with four quatrains and a rhyme scheme of abcb.

The main function of a poem is to convey an idea or emotion in beautiful language. It paints a picture of what the poet feels about a thing, person, idea, concept, or even an object. Poets grab the attention of the audience through the use of vivid imagery , emotional shades, figurative language , and other rhetorical devices. After all, everything else it does has been completely systematic. So it might catch a reader off guard when the house truly starts to die. The house's desire to save itself, combined with the cacophony of dying voices, certainly evokes human suffering. In a particularly disturbing description, Bradbury writes:. The parallel with the human body is almost complete here: bones, skeleton, nerves, skin, veins, capillaries.

The destruction of the personified house allows readers to feel the extraordinary sadness and intensity of the situation, whereas a graphic description of the death of a human being might simply make readers recoil in horror. When Bradbury's story was first published, it was set in the year Later versions have updated the year to and The story is not meant to be a specific prediction about the future, but rather to show a possibility that, at any time, could lie just around the corner. Share Flipboard Email. Catherine Sustana. Literature Expert. Catherine Sustana, Ph.

Updated August 08, Cite this Article Format. Sustana, Catherine. Biography of Ray Bradbury, American Author. Analysis of "Sonny's Blues" by James Baldwin. Recommended Reads for High School Freshmen. Classic Poems About Sailors and the Sea. And then she fell deeply in love with Tom in the early days of their marriage, only to discover his cheating ways and become incredibly despondent see her earlier comment about women being "beautiful little fools". So by now she's been hurt by falling in love, twice, and is wary of risking another heartbreak. Furthermore, we do see again her reluctance to part with her place in society. Being with Gatsby would mean giving up her status as old-money royalty and instead being the wife of a gangster.

That's a huge jump for someone like Daisy, who was essentially raised to stay within her class, to make. So it's hard to blame her for not giving up her entire life not to mention her daughter! To understand Daisy's role in the story and to analyze her actions, understanding the context of the s—especially the role of women—is key. First of all, even though women's rights were expanding during the s spurred by the ratification of the 19 th Amendment in , the prevailing expectation was still that women, especially wealthy women, would get married and have children and that was all. Divorce was also still uncommon and controversial. So Daisy, as a wife and mother who is reluctant to leave an unhappy marriage, can be seen as a product of her time, while other female characters like Jordan and Myrtle are pushing their boundaries a bit more.

You can explore these issues in essays that ask you to compare Daisy and Myrtle or Daisy in Jordan—check out how in our article on comparing and contrasting Great Gatsby characters. Also, make sure you understand the idea of the American Dream and Daisy as a stand-in for it. You might be asked to connect Daisy to money, wealth, or the American Dream based on that crucial comment about her voice being made of money. Finally, be sure to read chapters 1, 4, 5, 6, and 7 carefully for any Daisy analysis! She doesn't appear in Chapters 2, 3, 8, or 9. Daisy definitely represents the old money class, from her expensive but relatively conservative clothing like the white dress she is introduced in , to her "fashionable, glittering white mansion" 1.

You can also argue that she represents money itself more broadly, thanks to Gatsby's observation that "her voice is full of money" 7. She also is the object that Gatsby pursues, the person who has come to stand in for all of his hopes, dreams, and ambition: "He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips' touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete" 6.

Because of this connection, some people tie Daisy herself to the American Dream—she is as alluring and ultimately as fickle and illusive as the promises of a better life. Some people also say Daisy stands for the relatively unchanged position of many women in the s—despite the new rights granted by the 19 th amendment, many women were still trapped in unhappy marriages, and constrained by very strict gender roles.

For an essay about what Daisy represents, you can argue for any of these points of view—old money, money itself, the American Dream, status of women, or something else—but make sure to use quotes from the book to back up your argument! First, we should note the obvious connection to sirens in The Odyssey—the beautiful creatures who lure men in with their voices. The suggestion is that Daisy's beautiful voice makes her both irresistible and dangerous, especially to men. By making her voice her most alluring feature, rather than her looks or her movement, Fitzgerald makes that crucial allusion clear. He also makes it easier to connect Daisy to less-tangible qualities like money and the American Dream, since it's her voice—something that is ephemeral and fleeting—that makes her so incredibly alluring.

If Daisy were just an especially beautiful woman or physically alluring like Myrtle, she wouldn't have that symbolic power. Daisy's beautiful voice is also interesting because this is a very chatty novel—there is a lot of dialogue! But Daisy is the only character whose voice is continually described as alluring. There are a few brief descriptions of Jordan's voice as pleasant but it can also come across as "harsh and dry" according to Nick 8. This creates the impression that it doesn't really matter what she's saying, but rather her physicality and what she represents to Gatsby is more important.

That in turn could even be interpreted as misogynistic on Fitzgerald's part, since the focus is not on what Daisy says, but how she says it. This question might seem quite simple at first: Daisy is sticking to her prescribed societal role by marrying and having a child, while Jordan plays golf, "runs around town" and doesn't seem to be in a hurry to marry. Daisy is conservative while Jordan is an independent woman—or as independent as a woman could be during the s. Case closed, right? Not quite! This could definitely be the impression you get at the beginning of the novel, but things change during the story.

Daisy does seem to contemplate divorce, while Jordan ends up engaged or so she claims. And even if Jordan is not currently engaged, the fact she brings up engagement to Nick strongly hints that she sees that as her end goal in life, and that her current golf career is just a diversion. Furthermore, both Daisy and Jordan are also at the mercy of their families: Daisy derives all of her wealth and power from Tom, while Jordan is beholden to an old wealthy aunt who controls her money. They don't actually have control over their own money, and therefore their choices. So while Jordan and Daisy both typify a very showy lifestyle that looks liberated—being "flappers," having sex, drinking alcohol which before the s was seen as a highly indecent thing for a woman to do in public , and playing golf in Jordan's case—they in fact are still thoroughly constrained by the limited options women had in the s in terms of making their own lives.

One argument Daisy supporters people who argue she's misunderstood and unfairly vilified by certain reads of the novel make often is that we don't really know Daisy that well by the end of the novel. Nick himself admits in Chapter 1 that he has "no sight into Daisy's heart" 1. And readers aren't the only people who think this. Fitzgerald himself lamented after the novel failed to sell well that its lack of success was due to the lack of major, well-developed female characters.

In a letter to his editor, Fitzgerald wrote : "the book contained no important woman character, and women control the fiction market at present. In any case, I think our best glimpse at Daisy comes through the portion narrated by Jordan—we see her intensely emotional response to hearing from Gatsby again, and for once get a sense of how trapped she feels by the expectations set by her family and society.

So, unfortunately, we just don't see much of Daisy's inner self or motivations during the novel. Probably the character who knows her best is Jordan, and perhaps if Gatsby were from Jordan's point of view, and not Nick's, we would know much more about Daisy, for better or worse. The Great Gatsby would probably much less memorable with a happy ending, first of all! Sad endings tend to stick in your mind more stubbornly than happy ones. Furthermore, the novel would lose its power as a somber reflection on the American Dream. After all, if Gatsby "got the girl," then he would have achieved everything he set out to get—money, status, and his dream girl. The novel would be a fulfillment of the American Dream, not a critique. The novel would also lose its power as an indictment of class in the US, since if Daisy and Gatsby ended up together it would suggest walls coming down between old and new money, something that never happens in the book.

That ending would also seem to reward both Gatsby's bad behavior the bootlegging, gambling as well as Daisy's the affair, and even Myrtle's death , which likely would have made it less likely Gatsby would have caught on as an American classic during the ultra-conservative s. Instead, the novel's tragic end feels somewhat appropriate given everyone's lack of morality. In short, although on your first read of the novel, you more than likely are hoping for Gatsby to succeed in winning over Daisy, you have to realize the novel would be much less powerful with a stereotypically happy ending.

Ending with Daisy and Tom as a couple might feel frustrating, but it forces the reader to confront the inescapable inequality of the novel's society. Let's address some common questions about Daisy and her motivations, since she can be challenging to understand or sympathize with. At the end of their first read of The Great Gatsby , many students don't like Daisy much. After all, she turned Gatsby down, killed Myrtle, and then skipped town, even refusing to go to Gatsby's funeral! Perhaps that's why, on the internet and even in student essays, Daisy often bears the brunt of readers' criticism—many forums and polls and blogs ask the same question over and over: "does anyone else hate Daisy? But you have to remember that the story is told from Nick's point of view, and he comes to revere Gatsby.

And since Daisy turns Gatsby down, it's unlikely Nick would be sympathetic toward her. Furthermore, we don't know very much about Daisy or her internal life—aside from Chapter 1, Nick doesn't have any revealing conversations with her and we know little about how her motivations or emotions change over the novel. There are also hints that she is emotionally unstable—see her interactions with Gatsby, Jordan, and Nick in Chapter As [Tom] left the room again she got up and went over to Gatsby and pulled his face down kissing him on the mouth.

With her husband in the next room, Daisy kisses Gatsby, encourages Jordan to kiss Nick, and then starts dancing gleefully on the fireplace, only to calm down and begin crooning exaggeratedly as her daughter is brought into the room. These aren't exactly the actions of a calm, cool, collected individual. They suggest immaturity at best, but at worst, emotional or even psychological instability.