Johnny Got His Gun

Rating:
Summary: Reality of War
Review: The brutal, terrifying, and uncompromising occurrence of war has destroyed millions of lives in past centuries. In Johnny Got His Gun the horrible realities of war are illustrated through the mind of a helpless victim of war named Joe Bonham. In the book Joe loses his eyes, ears, nose all the way to his throat, arms, and legs due to a bomb blast. He goes through life lying on a hospital bed thinking to himself and trying to reach out and communicate with his nurses by tapping his head on his pillow in Morse code. When he finally communicates he is not given any help. The author, Dalton Trumbo, uses details, appropriate syntax, and diction for Joe's thoughts to indicate that the gruesome idea of war must be avoided at all costs.

Trumbo uses an abundance of very simple details in Joe's description of the events of his life, many of which are appealing to the senses. These sensory details not only help the reader picture the situations and relate to the characters but they also provide a contrast with Joe's condition. While at war, a bomb explosion left him without a sense of sight, hearing, and taste. At the hospital Joe thinks about his life before he went to war. In one instance Joe thinks about when he worked at a bakery and remembers blueberry pies, hot crossed buns, and roses given to his boss by a fellow worker. Later in the book Joe thinks about the many fruits and vegetables that his father grew and his mother canned. Every item of food Joe mentions is a reminder to the reader that he will never taste food again. Such small details can evoke so much sympathy for Joe.

Trumbo also uses a very intelligent and accurate syntax for the streaming, desperate, or sometimes quick thoughts of Joe. Trumbo does not use punctuation in this novel which may suggest he wanted Joe to sound as though he had a stream of thoughts. When Joe thinks about things he likes in his past life, the sentence structure is narrative, flowing, and said with a calm and peaceful tone. In telling about his job at the bread factory Joe says "Walking all night long and working hard and getting eighteen dollars at the end of the week for your trouble. Not bad."(65) However when Joe is worried about something or becomes panicky, the syntax changes to panic with the tone. As Joe is coming to the realization of being totally disabled, he becomes frantic and says "Oh please no. No no. It isn't me. Help me. It can't be me. Not me. No no no....".(64)

Trumbo uses diction to reveal the truth about war. In the very beginning of the book Joe loses a close family member. The discovery of the death for the reader is very blunt when Joe says "Jody I got to go home. My father just died."(4) This event sets the tone of the book as lonely and depressing. Joe has not been in the hospital very long but he thinks to himself "there was a thick silence and yearning to listen and lonesomeness."(14) Joe becoming totally disabled continues the book with a sympathetic and sorrowful tone. Although the book is swarming with depressing horrific depictions of war the accomplishments Joe makes while on the hospital bed are very inspiring and prove to outweigh the bad. Perhaps the most moving part of the book was when Joe, after trying so long, actually communicated with someone. The nurse has brought a man to send Morse code by tapping Joe on the forehead. Joe says "A finger came out of the darkness a finger so enormous that it shattered against his forehead like the crash of a pile driver. It echoed inside his brain like thunder in a cave."(217) Joe seems as though he will be rescued but the man who he had made first contact with just dismisses Joe's persistent head tapping and sticks a needle in him to put him to sleep. The book ends with a mocking tone in the sentence "You plan the wars you masters of men plan the wars and point the way and we will point the gun."(243)

Through use of diction, syntax, and detail Trumbo was able to reasonably expose the controversial issue of the harsh realities of war and how people should not be sent to die against their will. Even though Trumbo wrote this book in fiction it is very believable because it is so realistic and everything in it probably has happened. If every member of every military in the world could read this book then they might think twice before having a war.

Rating:
Summary: Read this before supporting any future military action
Review: Trumbo gives a truly horrid account of one mans experience in World War I. This novel flashes between the happy, careless prewar life of an American boy and the grim life he leads afterwards. Trumbo exposes war as the raw, inhumane act that it is. Moreover, "Johnny Got His Gun" convinces the reader that very little, if anything, is worth the price of sacrificing countless bodies to win a war.

"Nothing is bigger than life. There's nothing noble in death. What's noble about never seeing the sunshine again? What's noble about having your legs and arms blown off? What's noble about being an idiot? What's noble about being blind and deaf and dumb? What's noble about being dead?"

Trumbo questions the basic assumptions for which patriotic Americans send their boys off to die and makes the reader question whether any war can be fully justified for the societal costs it requires. Though it was published in 1939, the ideas and feelings it conveys are universal. After reading this, I, as an American, questioned the military involvement of most conflicts our nation has been a part of in the last hundred years. It is an eye-opener and it will really make you reconsider the next time you think this country should go to war. . .

Rating:
Summary: He sure did; didn't he.
Review: This book is often on the banned book list during wartime. Sah shame. Suppose it's hard to be heard without mouth arms and legs.

Rating:
Summary: Raw and Extremely Realistic Memories of War
Review: JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN is extremely raw and realistic. Dalton Trumbo's gut- wrenching look at war is very captivating. The plot reveals a war described as a journey to sacrifice, the road to hell, odyssey of suffering, and as a bloody mess. This book is Dalton Trumbo's best work ever. It is a must-read for anyone who has not seen the trials and tribulations of a war vet. Trumbo gives a multi-faceted in-depth at one man's suffering. The soldier comes out of war remembering the repugnant stench of combat, While traumatized and disabled in the hospital, the smell of memories past and his life's distorted direction haunts him. Even though it was written over thirty years ago his rotted view on war remains relevant today. Even if you have not lost a loved one to war this book will make you feel as if you have. As a person with partial paralysis and muscle atrophy, I identify with the soldier and recognize that Dalton Trumbo is an empathetic genius who captures the rage and feelings in a handicapped war vet's struggle to live life.

Rating:
Summary: A brilliant genuine look at WWI
Review: In a furious mad rush of energy without pause or punctuation, Dalton Trumbo explains the cruel and unforgiving aftermath of war, in the form of a WWI verteran named Joe Bonham. Losing his senses after a bomb blast, Joe must learn to work with his mind in a hospital hellhole without the limbs that we would all take for granted.
The grim and gripping reality of war and its effects are presented with such precision and anger, with Trumbo using every man who lost his life, every child that would be born if that man was alive today, and every man who fought for false liberty and justice as his influence.
The book weaves in and out between Joe's present life and his past memories. His whirling emotions are played in his mind like a movie production would. Boredom and pitch black darkness create an emotional playground, with memories of Kareen, his friends and family twirling and teasing him with the bitter reality that he will never be able to know his closest kin, but only visualize them.
With Joe's present life, he is able to make a perceptive brain schedule of his nurses and time of day. He can feel the temperature change, the vibration of the hospital staff's footsteps, and the touch of the nurses attending to him. By using his knowledge of Morse code, he is at a constant danger of not being understood, or by being put to sleep to shut his manic rapidfire tapping motions.
Trumbo is victorious in the ideas of pacifism and idiocies of war. It is a confusing ead, however, with its continious sentences, but it a rewarding story when it ends. This book is a great example of how war is a contradictory statement: Why must we have war in order to have peace?

Rating:
Summary: Powerful anti-war novel
Review: Written before World War II, Johnyy Got His Gun is a very powerful anti-war novel written by Dalton Trumbo. It tells the story of Joe Bonham, an average young man who enlists in the army to serve in France during the first world war. Horribly mutilated by a shell, Joe loses his arms, legs, mouth, nose, hearing, and sight. He is forced to lie on a hospital bed as the world goes on around him. Trapped by his body, his mind must try and survive. There are countless powerful passages in Trumbo's novel. After years of being able to do nothing but think, Joe attempts to communicate with his nurses through morse code by beating his head against his pillow. Reading this passage, you can feel his desperation as he tries to contact the world.

Johnny Got His Gun is not an easy book to read, but it is worth it once you are done. Trumbo writes much of his story as a train of thought of Joe Bonham, so much of the novel is a run-on sentence. Because of this, the reader feels like you are there with Joe. This novel will make you question everything you ever thought about war, most notably patriotism and the overall stupidity of the violence of war. The ending alone with Joe's condemnation of the governments and higher-ups is worth a read. This book ranks up there with Slaughterhouse Five and All Quiet on the Western Front as classic anti-war novels. For a very powerful and moving book about the atrocities of war, check out Dalton Trumbo's Johnny Got His Gun!

Rating:
Summary: Disturbing, Haunting, Nightmarish, Gripping.
Review: Historian, Howard Zinn author of "A People's History of the United States" named this book as one of the books that influenced him the most in his life;thus, I decided to read it because I wanted to see what sort of book had the power to affect the writer who affected my life in the same way.

With no time to do much but study for upcoming tests, I picked this novel up and couldn't not put it down. Although I was running out of time for studying for a final exam, every paragraph,page,chapter,and section of this book would not let me go. Once the nightmare begun, I had to finish it.
I finished the book 7 hours after starting it. That night I was hoping I would not dream about it once I went to sleep. The existence of the main character is haunting;his thoughts and dreams always weaving a mesh with no dicernible beginning or end, reality and dreams are all the same. However,I you get abosorbed by this book and you will become the "hero" of the story: his disillusion, frustration, and helplesness will become your own.
If you ever felt patriotic,or gung-ho,then read this book. I guarantee you too will question the theology of patriotism,or the falsity of its preachers. Like those who wave flags and appeal to the patriotism of others, asking them to risk their lives in wars while they stay home and watch the war unfold in the evening news. The hypocrisy of politicians,pundits, and other so-called leaders are conspicously brought to bear and they are mercilessly indicted by Joe Bonham, the protagonist of the novel.
However, this is an indictment of a mind that although alive, it lives in silence and darkness. The stream-of-conciousness narrative of the novel goes deeper and deeper into the nothingness of an existence which has been completely cut off from the physical world. With no eyes to see, no ears to hear, no tongue to speak: just total,coplete and unending nothingness; just him and his thoughts.
In the book, Joe Bonham wants to die and live all at once. He is continously trying to keep himself busy by trying to figure out the time of day, what country he is in, the schedule of nurses. In short, trying to regain a foothold in the real world, while skating at the edge of insanity.
Just thinking about the novel is maddening,the final pages of the book alone make it one that I know will haunt me every night for the next few nights,along with every quiet moment I may have, just like it did right now when I decided to write this review. I just hope I don't ever dream about this book, reading it alone was enogh like a nightmare. Its like the dream sometimes people have where they are suffocating, drowning or unable to breathe; only to wake up and realize their face is pressed against the pillow. If you ever had a dream like that one consider yourself lucky you woke up: In this book, Joe Bonham never did.

Rating:
Summary: Useless Acts Meant Only to Harm
Review: The book promised that it would change my view of war. It was correct. The entire review is vague on purpose in order to keep the text's original impact.

The book focuses on the damage war does to individuals. Soldiers may die valantly on the battlefield for their country, but there are many people who get severely injured as well. The reader learns to care about the main character through flashbacks and his thoughts.

His description fits a wide percentage of people in our military and its this universality that makes it so effective. We genuinely care about him. And war ruined his entire life.

My favorite parts: a few multi-page rants about how useless war is and how he learned to live with his new cicumstances. I can see both pacifists and warhawks enjoying the book for different reasons. Read it and come up with your own.

Rating:
Summary: Amazing
Review: I am not finished with the book yet. However,i can already tell that this book is one of favorites. Chapter 10 alone is one of the best and correct chapters in any book. Everyone that is against war and government should completely agree with that chapter. Go buy the book. It is amazing.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent book but has one MAJOR flaw
Review: Johnny Got His Gun was published on the eve of WW2, Poland had just been invaded by Germany and the world powers were gearing up for war. As the US entered the conflict, many pacifists of the American Left used this novel as their "poster-book" for a movement of pacifism. Trumbo, however, decided to end publishing of the book until the end of WW2.
I learned all of this from reading the introduction, and truly, I wish I had not read the introduction. Trumbo seems to be confused on the question of war, it seemed to me after reading this book that Dalton was a pacifist, but the introduction makes it seem that Trumbo disapproved of WW1 but enjoyed the conflict of WW2. This is very strange to read after reading one of the best pacifist novels ever. However, I should point out that a second part of the intro was added in 1970 by Trumbo which denounced the Vietnam War. All of this leads me to believe that Trumbo may in fact approve of some wars, which lessens the impact of the book.
As for the actual book, it is done BEAUTIFULLY. You are taken through the mind of a former soldier, from his current ailment to his past to the war in between. One entire chapter in the book is the man rambling to himself about the ludicrious reasons men go to war. It is life-changing, really.
In short, it is an excellent novel that Gandhi, King, and the later Malcom X probably all loved or would've loved if they had read it, it is a manifesto of pacifism, probably the best one ever done by a white American. There are too many people in this world who cannot learn to forgive, understand, and love eachother, and are consumed with the need to hurt eachother. This book will take those conservatives down a notch.