Johnny Got His Gun: The Horror Of War

Trenches full of rotting bodies. Deadly shells falling from the burning sky. Savage screams of young men, drowning in blood and dirt. All these are aspects of war, of the First World War. Dalton Trumbo's anti-war novel, Johnny Got His Gun, ideally captures the horrors of war, and its effects on individual soldiers, their fate, their mentality, and their families. The author introduces the reader to Joe Bonham, a young American soldier tragically wounded on the last day of World War One. Throughout the story, the author leads the reader through the emotions, thoughts, and reflections of the protagonist. Thanks to the honesty and detail with which the story is written, the reader is able to fully experience the impact and the tragedy of war.

The last day Joe Bonham could recall was November 11, 1918; the last day of the First World War. Joe joined the army after some important man tapped him on the shoulder and said that Joe has to defend his country and make the world safe for democracy. Joe got his gun, and now he was sank into the deep darkness of a coma, after being blown away by an enemy shell. After an unknown period of time, the young wounded soldier awakes in a hospital bed. Tragically realizing that he had lost both his legs, both his arms, and was unable to see, speak, hear, or smell. Not long ago, a healthy young men he was, now, a useless stump. The only difference between Joe's mutilated body and a raw piece of meat, was his consciousness, his feelings, and the ability to think and reason. The protagonist walks on the edge of sanity, barely recognizing being awake from asleep. Throughout the story, Joe dwells in the darkness and nothingness of his new

life, criticizing the pointlessness of war, the evil of the power holding class, and the

grotesque fight of ideologies, when really it is just business. Finally, the main character finds a way to communicate with the outer world; the Morse code. When Joe asks to be released from the hospital, and exposed to the public, his request is rejected, in fear of revealing to the mothers and fathers of the nation the tragic effects of war.

Dalton Trumbo's novel, Johnny Got His Gun, does not provide the reader with many historical facts. Except the time period and conflict in which the story takes place, World War One, and the description of November 11th, 1918, as the last day of the global conflict in which the protagonist fought. Nevertheless, the book is historically accurate, it speaks of a specific historical time period, the First World War, without changing facts, or showing a false impression of the realities of the war. Judging by the time period in which the author wrote Johnny Got His Gun, it is safe to state that Trumbo might have had a personal experience of the First World War. This would make the novel even more reliable. The book was written in 1938, but it was not released until 1939, just before the beginning of another monstrous global conflict, the Second World War. It seemed as a perfect timing for the book to be released, as a warning to all the young men, of the horrible experience and results of war. Also, instead of affecting the reader's factual knowledge of the described time period, the book affects the reader's understanding of the effects and results of the events which took place during World War One. The novel allows the reader to become well acquainted with the point of view of a casualty of the war. The point of view represented by the protagonist, logically, should be representative of the time period in which the novel was written, but not practically. A pacifist and

antiwar standing of the main character could be an exception, an exceptive point of view

of a mutilated and crippled soldier.

Although, Joe Bonham's antiwar view is not exactly representative of the 1930's public opinion, it most definitely represents the ideology of a lonely and empty life of a crippled survivor of the First World War. The casualties, of the war that ended in 1918, reach terrifying numbers, an estimate of 9 million dead, and hundreds of thousands of wounded and crippled soldiers and civilians. That gives an enormous amount of people ready to support Dalton Trumbo's opinion of the First World War, and any other war. Therefore, Johnny Got His Gun is not only representative of the authors opinion of war, but also of the hundreds of thousands of people horribly affected by war. The book forces the reader to concentrate on the tons of corpses, and on the number of crippled casualties, instead on the victors and heroes of war.

Heroes, crushed from the weight of their medals, sitting in their wheelchairs, the children of war. The survivors of war are forever crippled, bodily and mentally. The book sends an important message: after you survive the horror of the battlefield, you face the horror of your future, your deformed life. The author aims to convince and inform all the mothers and sons, of the bestiality and nonsense of joining a military conflict. If the image of Joe Bonham's mutilated body could reach each "Johnny" around the world, maybe less "heroes" would blindly follow the dirty propaganda, and the empty slogans, thrown at them by the moneyed class. Dalton Trumbo introduces the power holding class of society as oppressors of the working class, as the inciters of conflicts. The privileged, powerful and wealthy part of our nation,