Rating: 
Summary: Superb writing, very thought provoking.
Review: This is one of the best novels in the English language. Its message is important, but the one thing that makes this so great: it has no punctuation. The speed and pace with which you read this novel aids in the action and the message of the story. This was the inspiration for the Metallica song and video "One," to aid in the visual placement. It's about a hunk of meat in a hospital bed, no senses, not ability tp speak. It is the best depiction of the horrors of war that can ever be captured in the written word or on screen, as this novel was in a movie of the same name. You learn the torment and suffering and pain of losing all hope, knowing that you went to war and had your life ended, even though your still alive. You're inside this mans head, thinking what he thinks just as if you were thinking it all for yourself. The message is clear and it has a lot of supporting evidence. Trumbo is relentless in voicing his opinion of anti-war sentments. You know very soon that he against the thought of war. But don't even think about the message it is supposed to be delivering, read it for the pure literary merit that it oozes from every page, from every line, from every word. It's astonishing.
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Summary: JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN
Review: Johhny got his Gun is the best book I have ever read in my life. Dalton Trumbo writes in a way that is so compelling. He says exactly what's on his mind, and he expresses it very well throughout this book. This book also makes you appreciate the things you take for granted. The things you cannot buy. I love this book, and I highly reccomend it.
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Summary: story undermined by agenda
Review: This novel is VERY hit and miss. The flashback scenes were actually my favorite, in which we get a glimpse of this man, Joe, before he was a slab of meat with a brain. His descriptions of being a faceless, armless, legless, earless, lipless, noseless, etc. man are quite gory and disturbing, which is good. But he gets a bit redundant here and there, making the impact not as powerful as it could be. When he goes off on tangents about Christ I think I get the symbolism, but it doesn't quite jive with me. I believe Trumbo was trying to make a statement, and that is fine, but I think (especially at the end)his statement gets in the way of the story, which in turn gets in the way of the impact. As a reader you feel you were manipulated just to get to the part where he is raling against war, in a context that doesn't seem to gel with the story. Plus the style of writing is pretty sloppy, and what's with the no comas? Kind of got on my nerves.Overall, glad I read it, certianly wasn't a waste of time, but as far as being the "fiercest anti-war novel ever written" I'd hope not, because in it's shining moments it seems to be about survival most of all, and not necessarily about the evil's of war, at least it wasn't for me.
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Summary: way ahead of its time
Review: The reviewer who gave this novel one star must have been expecting an action novel, because he missed the point entirely: the novel is about what war can do to the individual. For an American novel of that perios, it was ahead of its time (as far as I can tell), in the sense that it deals with war in a naturalistic and individualistic sense, rather than in a collective sense. After all, when the fighting stops and you return home, you are a person again, not part of a company of soldiers, and the soldier in this novel is the extreme case of someone who must "come home" so to speak. If you liked "All Quiet on the Western Front" or "The 13th Valley", then you'll probably appreciate this novel. It's definitely worth a try.
Rating: 
Summary: Powerful book on war
Review: This was one of the most terrifying books Ive encountered, not really in itself, but what it leaves you with, the unimaginable reality of war, something very real. The futile attempts to be human once again, the horrid descriptions and revelations, the thoughts on war in general, everything here comes together into a very powerful statement. This book says a lot about how we are pushed to involve ourselves in war, while only seeing one side of it, never the real (in this case shattered and neglected) face of it. My only reason for not giving this book 5 stars is that at parts it drags, which is ok in some places, but in others it seems unnecessary to the story, however this should not deter anyone from reading this important book.
Rating: 
Summary: Not that great.
Review: I was excited for this book when I got it. After reading the first hundred pages or so the first day I put off finishing it. Why you ask? Nothing ever happens. He lays in the bed and thinks about his life. It is an interesting concept, but I would prefer to take out about two hundred pages of the author's ranting about war. A good short story at best.
Rating:
Summary: Can I give it 6 stars...?!
Review: Thought to be one of the greatest antiwar novels written to date, Johnny got his gun is a terribly horrifying story about a young farm boy, Joe, who enters the great war. It packs a lot of power in the mere 243 pages.
Dalton Trumbo, wrote this book about five years after WWI. When it first was sent to publishers no one wanted to print it thinking that people would be angered by the book or find it to ruthless. Thus the book never was published until 1959, fifteen years after WWII . When it first started selling many people felt the writing was anti government and went against democracy.
The book stays with Joe the whole time there, just there in his mind. Both you and him slowly realize he is missing nearly every part of his body, even his face. Most men would go crazy, Joe is like most men he is emotionally ripped apart by the fact he can still live with so little still a part of him.
Through the pages you are opened up to a new perspective of war through Joe's thoughts, Its not glorious, death isn't great. This is all taught by realization of what Joe has lost, his life. He thinks back on his whole life. He realizes he has lost track of time so he devises a calendar which includes his own holidays and months.
This book is tremendously powerful. Although the writing is nothing of a bestsellers the point comes across very well. I found it hard to read this book due to its graphic depiction's of Joe and battle. It really makes you wonder "War, What is it good for...?"
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Summary: Mezmerising in its sickness, depressing in its truth
Review: Trumbo managed to write a novel, completely ficticious, bases on the WWI, that neither justifies or harbors it. In fact, the novel is a statement against boosting the economy through war, against sending innocent boys to die, against war in general. And the skill and passion with which Trumbo conveys it are equal to Kovac and Vonnegut. The horrifyingly real imagery and internal monologue of Joe, the soldier who becomes fodder for a cannon and has every part of his body cease to function except his mind, bring the reality of a war which was fought with no real reason and no real conscious to life.
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Summary: The Other Side of Trumbo's Masterpiece
Review: The misfortune suffered by authors of novels with social, cultural or political ramifications is a disproportionate response to the novel's message, while attention to the quality of the writing is lost in the book's affect. This novel's power resides not only in its message, but in the way in which that message is conveyed. Trumbo's masterpiece is not just a resonant statement against war, but a unique and indispensable contribution to American literature. His Joyce-like stream-of-consciousness fuses the text with a magnificent flavor. The language sprawls gloriously across each page. "I do not read; I eat," Simone Weil writes in "Waiting For God." Trumbo's language invites readers to eat rather than read, to flip the pages as though they would light one's fingers on fire if held too long. His brutally honest style is quotidian yet magical. It is the kind of simplicity embraced by such mythical literary voices as Ernest Hemmingway or Czeslaw Milosz. In fact, "Johnny Got His Gun" shares the plight of 20th century polish poets, who forcibly eliminated all romantic, inflated, grandiose or flowery imagery from their literature in response to a world so ugly that romanticism seemed a dishonest veil over the reality of a bloody century. Trumbo's reaction to that reality is similar, as his sparklingly mundane voice demonstrates. It is not only in his language, however, that Trumbo rises to the occasional of the best literature in American history. This is also a work of extraordinary imagination. Touchingly human flashbacks to times in the life of Joe, the main character, evoke moving meditations on love, family, and friendship, as well as a rather disturbing portrayal of working life in the depression era. "To talk with Lucy to be with Lucy to lie with Lucy was like finding peace in a heathen country it was like breathing the air of a place you love when you're sick and dying for a breath of it," Joe thinks to himself while in his hospital bed, deaf, blind and limbless, "To see her smile to hear her bright chatter to watch her bony little fingers fly as they worked the crochet needle with the night noises of Paris a foreign city just outside the window was enough to make anybody feel better and less lonely." Trumbo captures the devastating sorrow of a man who will never know the sensations of life again, from love to yellow puddles of leaves in the gutters of October. Finally, Trumbo's patient and vivid account of Joe's circumstance, that of a severely incapacitated victim of war, is so thoroughly haunting that, despite the improbability of such a catastrophic injury, Joe's situation becomes frighteningly real and believable. By now we all know that "Johnny Got His Gun" stands as perhaps the most heartfelt and effective indictment of war, but it is to the benefit of American literature that it be recognized as the work of a monumentally talented writer.
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Summary: THIS BOOK CHANGED MY LIFE.
Review: I read this book when I was 13. It may have seemed a bit mature for me but when I read it, I was moved. From what you see and hear on TV all that enters a young mans mind about war is a patriotic heroic act. After I finished reading this brillient peice of art, I sat in my room for around an hour with teary eyes and thought about how horrible war is and yet we are engaged in one right now. For some it may be patriotic and heroic to die or be injured in war, but this book showed me that war is a horrible act. I suggest buying it or reading it or whatever because this book is to powerful to give up.
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