"Johnny Got His Gun"

Book Review # 116046

English > Analysis
Literature > American

A brief review of the novel "Johnny Got His Gun" by Dalton Trumbo.

1,029 words () | 0 sources | 2009 United States

Paper Summary:

This paper examines how "Johnny Got His Gun" by Dalton Trumbo is about Joe Bonham, a soldier who went to war believing in one thing, and returned a forever-changed man. The paper discusses how the novel is simply an antiwar novel that contains a good many messages. The paper relates that, using everyday language, Trumbo offers the reader a novel rich in symbolism and theme that may cause even the most devoted military person to rethink his or her commitment.

From the Paper:

"Trumbo gives great insight into the inner working of Joe by giving us his extreme point of view. Trapped within his own thoughts, he rethinks his actions and how naive he was to believe in such a word as "liberty." In the novel, Joe says, " What the hell does liberty mean anyway?...a guy says let's fight for liberty and he can't show you liberty. He can't prove the thing he's talking about so how in hell can he be telling you to fight for it?" Joe is angry, first at himself, and later at the military and the government who trick simple working class fools into fighting for an abstract concept, which has no concrete meaning. Because Joe is on the brink of death, he has nothing to lose by angrily attacking those who made him this way, he has nothing to lose by feeling like he should be the new face of war, and he has nothing to lose by wanting to tell the truth about what he has learned, if only there was a way to get the message outside his head and into the minds of others."