pk1 's review for:

Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo

4.0

emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

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Not my favorite literary war/PTSD story, but I can't deny that the writing style is extremely modern for being published in 1939, and Trumbo approaches the topic with unique perspectives on war and what it really means to be alive. 

"And what kind of liberty were they fighting for anyway? How much liberty and whose idea of liberty? . . . What the hell does liberty mean anyhow? It's just a word . . . only it's a special kind of word. . . . No sir anybody who went out and got into the front line trenches to fight for liberty was a goddamn fool and the guy who got him there was a liar. . . . America fought a war for liberty in 1776. Lots of guys died. And in the end does America have any more liberty than Canada or Australia who didn't fight at all? . . . Then there was this freedom the little guys were always getting killed for. . . . Please mister give us a bill of sale on this freedom before we go out and get killed. For Christ sake give us things to fight for we can see and feel and pin down and understand. No more highfalutin words that mean nothing. . . . You can always hear the people who are willing to sacrifice somebody else's life. They're plenty loud and they talk all the time. You can find them in churches and schools and newspapers and legislatures and congress. . . . Nobody but the dead know whether all these things people talk about are worth dying for or not. And the dead can't talk. So the words about noble deaths and sacred blood and honor . . . are all put into dead lips by grave robbers and fakes who have no right to speak for the dead."

"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. Rockabye baby in the tree top don't stop a bomb or you'll probably flop. Now I lay me down to sleep my bombproof cellar's good and deep but if I'm killed before I wake remember god it's for your sake amen."

"Already they were looking ahead they were figuring the future and somewhere in the future they saw war. To fight the war they would need men and if men saw the future they wouldn't fight. So they were masking the future they were keeping the future a deadly secret."

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Bumped up from a 3 to a 4 star on a re-read. Still reads as very modern. A must-read in anti-war literature!