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4.18 AVERAGE
4.18 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Visceral, raging. I was a bit frustrated by some problems with the plot.
I've seen people refer to this as the quintessential anti-war novel. I haven't read enough books of that type to say one way or another whether this is the book, but it certainly delivers a strong message. Outside of its anti-war philosophizing, this book was interesting for the fact that the main character cannot use any of his senses (due to a wartime injury that destroyed his face, arms, and legs). There is a lot of internality, therefore, and a sense of hopelessness. All of which was well-written. It hasn't become an instant favorite of mine, but it's certainly well worth reading.
Rating: 7/10
Rating: 7/10
There’s no punctuation in the book and it was difficult to read.
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
challenging
dark
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
reflective
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
this book is about a soldier, Joe Bonham, who fights in World War I and loses both arms, both legs, his face, his ears, his mouth, teeth, and tongue, when an artiller shell falls on him. All this, while his mind functions perfectly, leaving him imprisoned in a shell. He tries to suffocate himself, by stopping his breath, but realizes he has a tracheotomy in his throat.
while the book goes on he slowly realizes the situation he's in, and he flashes back to his youth.
This is when his father dies, and it made me so sad, remembering my own father's death:
"Two Men in gleaming clean collars opened the door down there and started up the stairs. They Carried a long wicker basket. Quickly he stepped into the living room and pulled aside the sheets to have a look at his father before they reached the top of the stairs.
He looked down at a tired face that was only 51 years old. He looked down and thought dad I feel Lots older than you. I was sorry for you dad. Things weren't going well and they never would have gone well for you and it's just as good you're dead. People've got to be quicker and harder these days than you were dad. Good night and good dreams. I won't forget you and I'm not as sorry for you today as I was yesterday. I loved you Dad good night."
There's a part where he's remembering when he and his best friend signed up to work on the railroad during their high school summer break. They worked with a gang of Mexicans, who were used to the hard work.
On their first day, after eating lunch, all the Mexicans took off running. When the boys asked the supervisor where they were going he said they were going to swim. They had to go through a row of tumbleweeds to get to the canal where they were swimming.
" by the time he and Howie got back to their clothes they were whiskered with thistles to their hips. They noticed that the Mexicans didn't even bother to pick the thistles out. Some of the Mexicans were already starting on the trip back to the hand car so they sort of brushed the thistles off their legs and leaped into their clothes. Then they ran the two miles back and lunch was over and it was time to go to work again.
As the afternoon wore on he and Howie began to stumble at their work and finally to fall. The foreman didn't say anything when they fell down and neither did the Mexicans. The Mexicans just stopped and waited for them to get up staring like babies all the while. When they stumbled back to their feet they began tugging at the rails again. Every muscle in their bodies ached and still they had to keep on working. Most of the skin had worn off their hands. Every time they grabbed the hot rail-tongs and lifted they could taste the pain of raw hands clear into their mouths. The thistles in their feet and legs seemed to go deeper and deeper with every step they took and they festered and there was no time to stop and pick them out."
This is where he begins to realize the extent of the damage to his body:
"he began to reach out with the nerves of his face. He began to strain to feel the nothingness that was there. Where his mouth and nose had been there must now be nothing but a hole covered with bandages. He was trying to find out how far up that hole went. He was trying to feel the edges of the hole. He was grasping with the nerves and pores of his face to follow the borders of that hole and see how far up they extended.
It was like staring into complete darkness with your eyes popping out of your head. It was a process of feeling with his skin of exploring with something that couldn't move where his mind told it to. The nerves and muscles of his face were crawling like snakes toward his forehead. The hole began at the base of his throat just below where his jaw should be and went upward in a widening circle. He could feel his skin creeping around the rim of the circle. The hole was getting bigger and bigger. It widened out almost to the base of his ears if he had any and then narrowed again. It ended somewhere above the top of what used to be his nose. The hole went too high to have any eyes in it.
He was blind."
Another flashback and he remembers a time when he was 14 years old and went on his last camping trip up in the mountains with his father. This made me sad too, because it reminded me of the time when my two daughters became too old to want to hang out with me anymore. This is a heartbreaking time that every parent has to go through, but I was their mother and father both:
"... he knew it was something that had to happen sometime. That he also knew that it was the end of something. It was an ending and a beginning and he wondered just how he should tell his father about it. So he told him very casually. He said Bill Harper is coming up tomorrow and I thought maybe I'd go out with him. He said Bill Harper doesn't know very much about fishing and I do so I think if you don't mind I'll get up early in the morning and meet Harper and he and I will go fishing. For a little while his father didn't say a thing. Then he said why sure go along joe. And then a little later his father said has Bill Harper got a ride? He told his father no bill hasn't rod. Well said his father why don't you take my rod and let Bill use yours? I don't want to go fishing tomorrow anyhow. I'm tired and I think I'll rest all day. So you use my rod and let Bill use yours."
It would have been bad enough if that was all. But the next day when he and Bill Harper go fishing, Bill Harper loses his father's pride and joy: a valuable fishing rod. Joe is afraid to tell his father when he comes back that night.
"... it wasn't because he was afraid of what his father might say. It was because he knew that his father would never again be able to have a rod as good as the one that was gone.
Dad he said we lost your rod. We got a quick strike and before we knew it the rod was in the water. We hunted around for it and fished with the oars but we didn't get it so it's lost.
It seemed like maybe 5 minutes before his father made a sound. Then he turned slightly over in bed. He felt his father's arm suddenly thrown over his chest. He felt his warm comforting pressure. Well said his father I don't think we should let a little thing like a fishing rod spoil our last trip together should we?
There was nothing to say so he just lay still. His father had known all along that it was really their last trip together. From now on in the summer he would come up camping with guys like Bill Harper and Glen Hogan and the rest of them. And his father would come on fishing trips with men. It had just happened that way. It had to happen that way. But he lay there in bed beside his father with the two of them Jack-knifed together in the way they always slept best and his father's arm around him and he blinked back the tears. He and his father had lost everything. Themselves and the rod. "
Here's a part where he was remembering his teenage years when he and other boys used a girl who was just looking for acceptance and affection. I got so angry that I almost didn't care that this character got so hurt.
"there was a girl named Ruby and she for him was the first. It was when he was in the 8th maybe the 9th grade. Ruby lived down in Teller Addition on the other side of the tracks. Ruby was younger than he maybe only in the 6th or 7th grade but she was a great big girl an Italian and very fat. All the boys in town somehow began with Ruby because she never embarrassed them. She came right to the point and that was that although once in awhile you had to tell her she was pretty. But no other nonsense and if a guy didn't have any experience why Ruby never laughed at him and never told on him she just went right ahead and gave it to him.
the guys liked to talk about Ruby when there wasn't anything better to talk about. They liked to laugh about her in such talks and say oh no I never see Ruby any more I manage to get around I'm finding something new everyday. But that was all talk because they were really very young guys and Ruby was the first and only girl they knew they were too shy with other girls with nice girls. They soon grew ashamed of Ruby and when they went down they would always feel a little dirty and a little disgusted. They came away blaming Ruby somehow for making them feel that way. By the time they got to the 10th grade none of them would ever speak to Ruby and finally she disappeared. She just wasn't around anymore and they were all kind of glad they didn't have to meet her on the street."
Joe , in the prison of his head, finally hits on a way to communicate with the nurses that tend to him. He begins to tap his head against the pillow using Morse code. This goes on for months where he can't get through to them. But finally one day a nurse figures it out and brings a doctor who knows Morse code. The doctor Taps out on his chest in Morse code: what do you want? Then begins a long soliloquy, that must have lasted hours, but the reader understands it in minutes: He wants to be put in a glass case and to be taken places and shown to the public what war really means. He wants to be brought to a schoolhouse so that the children will understand that when the leaders say that they need them to fight for the freedom of the country, they'll say no because they know what it really means: that they will lose their lives. Here's an excerpt of it:
"closer please. You over there against the Blackboard what's the matter with you? Quit crying you silly little girl come over here and look at the nice man the nice man who was a soldier boy. You remember him don't you? Don't you remember little crybaby how you waved flags and saved tinfoil and put your savings in Thrift stamps? Of course you do you silly. Well here's the soldier you did it for.
Come on youngsters take a nice look and then we'll go into our Nursery rhymes. New nursery rhymes for new times. Hickory dickory dock my daddy's nuts from Shell shock. Humpty Dumpty thought he was wise rill gas came along and burned out his eyes. A diller a dollar a 10:00 scholar blow off his legs and then watch him holler. Rock-a-bye Baby in the treetop don't stop a bomb or you'll probably flop. Now I lay me down to sleep my bomb-proof celler's good and deep but if I'm killed before I wake remember God it's for your sake amen. "
After Joe has Tapped Out his soul's yearning, the doctor leaves. He comes back and says: what you ask is againstregulations.
The book ends, and the reader realizes that he will be left to live out his life imprisoned in the trunk of a body and the brain that remains on top of it.
A massively powerful message against war.
This book first came to my attention when I was in college--and, yes, it was because of the Metallica song and video featuring clips from the movie. What struck me the most was that the book was about World War I, and released back in the 1930s, and yet it was so vividly anti-war that it was a bit shocking. That is to say, it shocked me out of my sense that anti-war sentiment was something that was born in the 1960s--as if people had quite enjoyed war and wholeheartedly supported it up until the Vietnam War era. Trumbo goes after every aspect of the military-industrial complex by presenting us with one young soldier, believing that war is patriotic and necessary, until he ends up in a kind of limbo--alive and conscious, but in a struggle to let others know that. Trumbo makes us realize that there are consequences to war that are worse than death.
dark
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated