Rating: 
Summary: Six stars would have been more fitting...
Review: I heard about this book in another book, and ever since I did, I've been pining to read it. Oddly enough, my local library did not have a copy, but my school library (a tiny little thing) happened to have one. I saw it while I was walking along the isles and immediately checked it out.It was one of the best choices I've ever made. This is a fantastic book, one that should be read all over the country. This is a modern classic. A real modern classic, too. We find Joe in a hospital bed gradually realizing that he is an armless, legless, earless, eyeless, noseless, mouthless slab of meat after being shredded by a shell in WWI. What follows is a gruesome and horrific story that protests war and proclaims that life is the most important thing. Even more important than liberty or freedom or "any other words there are always words." Sure, there are no commas and most of the sentences are either two words or an entire page, but it makes for an interesting read. The lack of said commas only makes the book go faster, a quick pace that drives us into the heart of our worst fears emobodied in Joe. This is a wonderful book, breathtaking and imaginative. A daring journey into death with a mind. I can understand why so many people don't want to read it, though. It is a book that explores ideas that no one wants to hear in times of war when plastic flags wave from SUVs. But still, enjoy it for the literary genius that it is. If only I could give it another star...
Rating:
Summary: "Kill Me I'm asking you to kill me."
Review: I've never read the book, I've never seen the movie, but I know this epic story through metallica's acurate and beutifull
view. The song,lyrics and video are all based on this story.
Lyrics such as" I can't remember anything, can't tell if this is true or dream,deep down inside I feel the Scream this terrible silence stops in me. Now that the war is through with me I'm waking up and cannot see." and "Hold my breath as I wish for death, Oh god wake me please!" and "Darkness imprisoning me all that I see absolute horror, I cannot live, I cannot die, trapped in myself body my holding cell" and finaly"Landmine has taken arms,taken my legs,taken my soul left me with life as hell"These are just a few lyrics,the song is great probably Metallica's greatest song it is amazing so please listen to it. -Good Day
Rating:
Summary: An Understanding
Review: Dalton Trumbo captivates the essence of the aftermath of war in "Johnny Got His Gun". In morbid detail one understands what it is to "fight for your country". Not only that but this book explores human ideas, and what it's like to actually come to the realization of how fatal human ideas can become. Like the idea of fighting for democracy; when the privelages of your life, are literally taken from you, one can understand how fighting for an abstract idea has the same fulfillment as eating imaginary food. Or pretending to be asleep. Aside from that Trumbo does an excellent job of showing what it is to know who you are and what you want. This simply states that if you don't know what you want, you're doing things for unknown reasons and finding a reward, or consequence, or result that makes little sense because one doesn't know what they want. If you don't know what you want it's even harder to understand who you are, because if you're doing things for no real apparent sensible reason, that blurs the definition of who one can be. Like the character Joe, he went and fought a war, for no real apparent reason that he found, and paid for it dearly. This brought about a lot of thought, while Joe faded between dream and reality. This thought provoked the questions of who he is, and what were the reasons for doing what he did. 'Til finally Joe figured out who he was by answering the questions of why he did what he did.
Rating:
Summary: darkness, imprisoning me all that i see, absolute horror
Review: i havent read the book or seen the movie but the song "one" by metallica is based off the book. after hearing the song and watching the extended music video that shows clips from the movie, i really want to see the movie or read the book. i got a general idea of what its about and thats all i need to tell its an awesome story.
Rating:
Summary: Or how I learned to outsmart my English teacher.
Review: I first read "Johnny Got His Gun" while in High School during the Vietnam Era. We were supposed to read "Red Badge of Courage"...the worst piece of "coming of age" prose written. I read both books and wrote my report on "Johnny Got His Gun" instead of the assigned reading. I was so angry that any people could allow this bestiality and torture to happen to its own children that I could not sit still and choke down the pap the government/community/school/parents were force-feeding us. This book, and the daily death lists coming out of Vietnam was pivotol to my political life. I've reread the book several times. I most recently read it a few nights ago...and am still horrified by the dreams it draws up in my psyche. But now I am afraid...not angry...afraid that the American people I grew up with, marched with, protested with, worked with are gone and what we have left is an empty shell of a government. No longer can I trust my government or my neighbor. Goodbye, America.
Rating:
Summary: Why I quit the armed forces...
Review: To have no arms or legs, no ears, eyes, mouth, nose. No way of interacting with the outside world. The horror of being trapped eternally inside your own head without any chance of escape is the engine that propels Dalton Trumbo's brilliant tirade against the forces that lead us to destroy one another. The images evoked in this novel will keep you up nights, and may even change your outlook on life. It inspired this reader to seek, and I'm happy to say successfully obtain, a discharge from the armed services as a conscientious objector. An awesome and terrifying novel. Five stars.
Rating:
Summary: Hickory dickory dock my daddy's nuts from shellshock.
Review: Hickory dickory dock my daddy's nuts from shellshock. Humpty dumpty thought he was wise till gas came along and burned out his eyes. A dillar a dollar a ten o'clock scholar blow off his legs and then watch him holler. Dalton Trumbo has written a book that truly brings out the senselessness of war. A man is disabled beyond all imaginatoin ... maybe this could happen, maybe it couldn't, or maybe it has. That's not important -- what is important is the new point of view we get. This horribly disfigured and destroyed man has lost everything but his mind: he is a "living piece of meat." His loss of senses gives him, (and the reader), an entirely new perspective. The end is shattering, and the feeling of hopelessness returns; our main character is almost like Christ ... he is enlightened beyond all others and yet no one cares to listen to him. The last few pages are Trumbo's monologue concerning the foolishness of war. In the introduction, Trumbo writes: "Numbers have dehumanized us. Over breakfast coffee we read of 40,000 American dead in Vietnam. Instead of vomiting, we reach for the toast." Stylistically, Trumbo adds a very unique twist. The entire novel is almost devoid of punctuation. Commas don't exist, and quotation marks only occur during flashbacks and memories. Sentences aren't broken up, they just fall forward. I can't say that I like this much, but it does give the entire piece a sense urgency ... and madness. Thoughts leap between the narrator and the character, and it's hard to distinguish the difference. Clever isn't it? The insanity of both the character and Trumbo sort of jump right into the reader. You can read this book in one or two sittings, and it is more than worth it. It is the kind of novel that has such a profound impact on you that you'll be sent into a silent, contemplative stupor for a few hours after you finish it.
Rating:
Summary: if this isn't an anti-war novel, nothing is
Review: Like most people, the Metallica video for "One" exposed me to the movie Johnny Got His Gun, which I heard was mediocre, and I found out that it was originally a novel, written by Dalton Trumbo (who also directed the film). The Metallica video was horrifying, seeing a quadruple amputee with no face, and his macabre and desperate interior monologues, but the novel made Joe Bonham's own private hell a lot more clearer. Joe Bonham, or "Johnny," is an all-American young male who grew up in Colorado, and he would be considered normal as apple pie. Then he was shipped off to Germany in World War I, and got ambushed by a bombing attack, which left him armless, legless, faceless, and senseless (sans the sense of touch). While he is lying in his vegativie state, all he can do is think and reminisce about his life before he went off to war, and reflect on those things he would never experience again. The book grabs you and drags you into Bonham's agonizing, solitary world and parts of it were very heartbreaking and very emotional, one of the few books that required the use of a tissue. You feel his desperation, you feel his isolation, and Dalton Trumbo's personal philosophy on his opposition to warfare is sneaked into the narrative but he did it so that it went along w/ the story. His haunting introduction to the book, written around the time of the Vietnam War, makes you question the necessity of war and creates an unabashedly pacifist stance on war in general and how it ruins lives and families, and even nations. The book is undoubtedly liberal, especially in the introduction, but the book itself is told from a confused and rather blank or questioning perspective, hiding its message every time the nurse changes Joe Bonham's bedsheets, and every time Joe reflects on what life was and what life will be until he physically dies.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing
Review: This novel by Dalton Trumbo has left me speechless. All the positive aspects of this book you have read are true, and most (if not, all) of the negative aspects are false. For example, one reviewer writes that "we do not know if Johnny would be outraged by his condition." Now I find this terribly ignorant. Johnny is upset because that is what the author dictated. He is angry because Trumbo said so, and lets face it, you would not be a happy camper if you arms, legs, and face were blown apart.
That same reviewer also states that sever accidents that induce disabilities do not create a desire for suicide. Think again. When someone suffers a trauma like amputation, blindness, etc. horrible fits of depression sink in, ESPICALLY when you experience in one accident total removal of arms, legs, and senses. An old friend of my teacher's commited suicide about 6 monthes after he lost his legs in a motorcycle accident. Please, don't be foolish and say that you wouldn't want to commit suicide after such a terrible atrocity.
Alright, the main focus that Trumbo tried to convey is obviously that war is hell. Now, who makes war? Man. Who fights war? Man. What, if anything, has been gained by war? Nothing, really. Don't give me this WWII saved jews BS, because remember the idea is to abolish ALL war, not just American involvment in war. This means that Trumbo is also against the war to exterminate Jews. The idea, in the mind of Trumbo, is that the war to preserve democracy/freedom/whatever isn't any better than a war to end democracy/freedom/whatever. It also seems to me that this particular reviewer thinks that Stalin's russia and communism are the same when in fact they are quite different.
I personally find that a point/counterpoint argument helps us to lear and understand. Maybe the same is true for yourself, maybe it isn't. Final words: excellent novel. The book is short (about 250 pages) so I recommend picking it up even if you are a bit strapped on time.
Rating: 
Summary: depressathon ally
Review: this book is good, the story line is very developed but the book is very depressing. alot of characters where put in just to be killed. other than that its OK
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