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A review by bigenk
Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo
dark
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Truly remarkable and unlike anything I have ever read before. This is stream of consciousness style (devoid of a single comma) perspective of a World War I veteran who awakens in a hospital after he is hit with a mortar shell to find that he is both a quadruple amputee and missing all of his major sense except for touch. Joe's brain is fully functional, but he is locked into body that can merely roll around on the table, fully reliant on others for all of his needs. It's a terrifying prospect, and Joe is prone to bouts of psychosis, suicidal ideation, and raw animalistic panic as he comes to terms with his new reality. Between periods of lucid exploration of the present, Joe reminisces about the life that he had before his injury and the war that caused it. We get to know how he ended up as a doughboy in the trenches, what he left behind and what his dreams were. Though this is categorized as fiction, Joe is based on a real life veteran of the war who experienced much the same thing.
It is both riveting and horrific. I had a hard time putting it down and finished it in the course of twenty four hours, simultaneous repelled by the graphic representation of misery yet unable to stop myself from reading more. Sort of in the same vein as a car crash, there is a level of voyeuristic interest that propels the novel forward. There's hardly a plot to speak of really, just Joe discovering his limits, regaining a sense of time and his surrounding over time through the smallest indicators, like the subtle change in temperature on his skin.
Johnny Got His Gun is a purely pacifistic novel. Trumbo doesn't waste time by going into the minutia of the war, instead he rejects the notion of war wholesale as unconscionable. Anything is better than death. Nothing can possibly justify war, nothing is worth losing your life over. Especially when what you're fighting for is abstract ideas like democracy, freedom, or other moral values. Especially when who you're fighting for is the politicians that have made decisions for you, who tell you that your death is worthwhile. No idea, no government, no ideology is worth dying for, because death is the worst thing that can possibly happen to you.
Ironically, Johnny Got His Gun was picked up by the American right-wing, pro-nazi isolationists as a text through which they forwarded their movement to stop America from getting involved in World War II. This is especially funny considering that Trumbo was member of the American-communist party, and was blacklisted from Hollywood in the 1940's and 50's, though apparently was also an isolationist that supported the Nazi-Soviet Pact. Johnny Got His Gun has some similarities to works like Nineteen Eighty-Four, where parties across the political spectrum claim ownership of the text and use it as a support to their values.
It is both riveting and horrific. I had a hard time putting it down and finished it in the course of twenty four hours, simultaneous repelled by the graphic representation of misery yet unable to stop myself from reading more. Sort of in the same vein as a car crash, there is a level of voyeuristic interest that propels the novel forward. There's hardly a plot to speak of really, just Joe discovering his limits, regaining a sense of time and his surrounding over time through the smallest indicators, like the subtle change in temperature on his skin.
Johnny Got His Gun is a purely pacifistic novel. Trumbo doesn't waste time by going into the minutia of the war, instead he rejects the notion of war wholesale as unconscionable. Anything is better than death. Nothing can possibly justify war, nothing is worth losing your life over. Especially when what you're fighting for is abstract ideas like democracy, freedom, or other moral values. Especially when who you're fighting for is the politicians that have made decisions for you, who tell you that your death is worthwhile. No idea, no government, no ideology is worth dying for, because death is the worst thing that can possibly happen to you.
Ironically, Johnny Got His Gun was picked up by the American right-wing, pro-nazi isolationists as a text through which they forwarded their movement to stop America from getting involved in World War II. This is especially funny considering that Trumbo was member of the American-communist party, and was blacklisted from Hollywood in the 1940's and 50's, though apparently was also an isolationist that supported the Nazi-Soviet Pact. Johnny Got His Gun has some similarities to works like Nineteen Eighty-Four, where parties across the political spectrum claim ownership of the text and use it as a support to their values.