Johnny Got his Gun :: Essays Papers

Johnny Got his Gun When I first started reading Johnny Got His Gun, by Dalton Trumbo, I thought it would be more direct in its description of World War I. However, the entire novel takes place in one American soldier’s hospital bed. His name is Joe. He no arms, legs, or face, and he is deaf. Rendered this way after an explosive shell hit him, he has no way to communicate with the world. Joe dreams throughout the novel, mostly about his memories, and because of this, a great deal of the book is disjointed and contains a dreamlike quality. Through his dreams, I learned about Joe’s life before the war. I learned he lost his father fairly young, and about his boyhood romances. Joe worked at the railroad, and at a bakery. Before he left for the war, he had a girlfriend named Kareen who I believe he wanted to marry. When Joe is awake, he at first is unaware of his injuries. He realizes he is deaf, but he goes through several stages of denial and acceptance for his physical features. He thinks his face is only swathed in bandages, not gone. He thinks the doctors are injecting drugs into the heel of his hand, not the stub that was his arm. Only when Joe realizes he’s missing his arms and legs and face, does he realize the full extent of his situation. Joe doesn’t even know where he is, though he speculates that he could be in England, France, or possibly America. Joe knows that if his arms and legs didn’t make it through the shell blast that nearly killed him, his dog tags certainly didn’t. He knows he’ll never see his sister or mother, or Kareen, his girlfriend, again. He’ll never even know where he is. Joe learns to tell time by how often the nurses come. He first figures out when dawn is by the warming of the sun’s rays on his skin. He then keeps count of how often the day and night nurses come between two dawns. When Joe finally gets it right (it takes several tries) he feels as though he’s regained some sort of connection with the rest of the world. After five years, Joe is given a medal of honor for his efforts and losses in the war.