Compare And Contrast Boy And Johnny Got His Gun

Johnny began as a scared teen from a bad family and the wrong-side of the tracks. Ponyboy is describing the members of the gang, specifically Johnny, when he states, “And Johnny, who was the most law-abiding of us, now carried in his back pocket a six-inch switchblade. He’d use it, too, if he

Joe-Boy is confident. He went to the ravine because he wanted to, not because his friends want him to. One example from the text is, “But then Starlene and Joe-Boy said, ‘Come with

Life can bring unexpected events that individuals might not be prepared to confront. This was the case of O’Brien in the story, “On the Rainy River” from the book The Things They Carried. As an author and character O’Brien describes his experiences about the Vietnam War. In the story, he faces the conflict of whether he should or should not go to war after being drafted. He could not imagine how tough fighting must be, without knowing how to fight, and the reason for such a war. In addition, O’Brien is terrified of the idea of leaving his family, friends and everything he loves behind. He decides to run away from his responsibility with the society. However, a feeling of shame and embarrassment makes him go to war. O’Brien considers

Life can bring unexpected events that individuals might not be prepared to confront. This was the case in the short story “On The Rainy River” written by Tim O’Brien. Young Tim is drafted to the military to fight the American War in Vietnam. He faces the conflict of whether he should or should not go to war after being drafted. The thought of giving up the future he has worked so hard for and instead fight a war “for uncertain reasons” terrifies him. He must make the agonizing decision of whether to pursue his personal desire and in turn be shamed by society or conform, sacrificing his ideals in the process.

Imagine you’re lying on the muddy, damp Earth and all around you can hear the screams of people you know dying. Shells explode, bullets race through the air, and poisonous gas seeps around you, all with the intent to harm you in some way. Yet, you willingly put yourself in that position day after day, year after year. The question surrounding this situation is, why? Who would be masochistic enough to choose to put their lives in danger and live in the most perilous environment possible? Two very different books give us insight into the thoughts of the soldiers who continuously put themselves in these environments. Your Death Would Be Mine by Martha Hanna and All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Remarque lets us into the minds of Paul Pireaud and Paul Baumer as they try to survive life as a soldier in the Great War. I argue that Pireaud and Baumer had very different reasons for continuing to fight despite having suffered beyond belief. In this paper I will analyze how the varying degrees of patriotism, brotherhood, family life at home, and age affected how these two men endured the treacherous life on the front of World War I.

Willing to go to war without knowing the deeper meaning of the situation? That’s what Vonnegut didn’t want to connect with his views. Vonnegut uses tactics to put the readers into a different dimension than the normal approach such as, using literal terms to bring life into a situation that doesn’t normally have light shed upon. Into much simple terms, war does not make boys into men. But it turns into much more devastating results. And depicts how a mature situation can’t turn boys into men but into mentally ill individuals. "He is in a constant state of stage fright, he says, because he never knows what part of his life he is going to have to act in next."(Vonnegut 23). These young

The thought of going to war excites many young men that have not experienced or have been a part of one. Individuals want to find a way out of the routine, mundane lifestyle that plagues many suburban households. People that just want some excitement enlist in a military branch that will not benefit them or anyone for that matter. In Philip Caputo’s book titled A Rumor of War, the true side of how war demolishes the human spirit is shown. His nonfiction novel captures the nasty side to war. Philip informs us how the mentality of a young man can change with the constant thought of death and fear as a daily ritual. Men do not think about death occurring to them at a young age. This changes when death is surrounding them on a daily basis during wartime. Caputo intended to inform the young public about the horrible nature of war. Mistakes are doomed to repeat themselves if people are not well informed and Caputo is trying to avoid future mistakes. Death surrounded him and many of his comrades during the Vietnam War. When the life of anyone is on the line, one tends to do drastic and sometimes unthinkable things to cope with the fear of death.

In the wise words of Charlie Anderson, “[I]f we don’t try, we don’t do. And if we don’t do, why are we here on this Earth?” Charlie Anderson is the protagonist in the movie Shenandoah, who lives with his six sons, Jacob, James, John, Nathan, Henry, and Boy, and his daughter, Jennie. Charlie Anderson is the type of person who responds to everything by trying and giving it his all, but only if it concerns him. The movie takes place during the Civil war, which occurs near their family farm and Charlie’s intent was to stay neutral because he felt that the war did not concern him, until his youngest son, Boy, was mistaken for a union soldier and taken by the confederate army. Charlie ventures off with five of his sons and his daughter, while James and his wife, Ann, and their baby stay back at the house. Along the way, tragedy strikes the family, affecting them in ways that cannot be undone. The protagonist in the novel Johnny Got his Gun, Joe Bonham, was drafted into the war and greatly injured as a result. Joe experiences a loss of his eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and limbs. The only thing that Joe is left with is a working brain and very little ways to communicate with the outside world. As the novel progresses, Joe faces an immense amount of internal conflict and struggles with the effects that war has on him. Although both Charlie and Joe experience the harsh impacts of war, they respond to them in quite different ways.

To witness other people being killed and letting your mind run its course and eat away at you asking yourself are you the next one? This is one of the main reasons why we need to appreciate the soldiers and veterans who have served for their country, they are brave people and have made huge sacrifices for us all. They do stuff that others are not willing to do to protect the freedom that was one of the main reasons why this great country im glad to call my home was established in the first place. These experiences that these soldiers go through can change them for the rest of their life. War and the tramuatizing stuff that goes with it can cause psychological problems that are hard to live with. My girlfriends father served in the military and has gone through some of these terrible things first hand and they have definitely changed him for life. Mr. Thornberry had been in the milirary for 8 years and was in combat during the desert storm. He saw things that no man would ever wish to see in his life. A friend taken away right before his own eyes while he was under fire but managed to get out of it with the help of his comrades. Although he was not really hurt physically he was mentally. He has reoccuring flashbacks of the event that took place and has gone through treatments and is now taking medicine but still that is not enough he still wakes up somenights from the night terrors that infest his mind. He once told me “I will never be the same man” (Thornberry 2016). In the things they carried there are many examples of ptsd throughout the book. For example when Norman Bowker witnessed Kiowa sucked into a pile of crap right before his eyes and had a chance to save her but risked being sucked in as well so he decided he would just save himself. This death changed Norman

The comparisons in the plot service in molding the books and helping the reader to have a better understanding of a soldier’s thoughts, and their mental state of mind. Close friendships form between the boys and other soldiers in their lines, in both cases the friend dies, forcing reality to set in and the boys are stricken with fear, and an urge for blood. At the beginning of the book, like Charley in “Soldier’s Heart,” Henry has certain morals he wants to keep, but loose in the heat of battle, becoming a savage in order to protect himself and his country. Surviving to see the end of the war, both boys have a wound left over from the war, whether it be a mental or physical scar, it is still present. These stories are alike in a numerous amount of ways that gives the reader a better sense of knowledge of what the soldiers go through during battle.

In the post-apocalyptic video game Fallout 4, the main character who is aptly named the Sole-Survivor, truthfully says “War, war never changes.” The principle that war never changes despite variations in setting or advancements in technology is thoroughly emphasized in the novel Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo, and the film Shenandoah directed by Andrew V. McLaglen. In the novel Johnny Got His Gun, the main character Joe Bonham was a soldier serving in WWI when he was unfortunately hit by an artillery shell. When Joe eventually wakes up, he is given the lonely task of trying to put the missing pieces of his life back together again, which is harder task than he first imagined. Another story that skillfully shows the hidden consequences

In the aftermath of a comparatively minor misfortune, all parties concerned seem to be eager to direct the blame to someone or something else. It seems so easy to pin down one specific mistake that caused everything else to go wrong in an everyday situation. However, war is a vastly different story. War is ambiguous, an enormous and intangible event, and it cannot simply be blamed for the resulting deaths for which it is indirectly responsible. Tim O’Brien’s story, “In the Field,” illustrates whom the soldiers turn to with the massive burden of responsibility for a tragedy. The horrible circumstances of war transform all involved and tinge them with an absurd feeling of

As evidenced from the past tense verb in the title of the novel, Johnny Got His Gun takes as its focus the aftermath of war for a soldier, rather than the optimistic, patriotic prewar time frame upon which other novels—as well as the original song "Johnny Get Your Gun"—focus. Although the novel remains clear about the fact that Johnny received his injuries from an exploding shell, Johnny does not ever think back to combat warfare. The novel takes as its opponent not combat warfare but rather the mentality of warfare and organization of modern warfare by the moneyed classes. Joe's memories related to the war, such as the Lazarus story, or the story of the man with a flap over his stomach, do not directly deal with warfare. Instead, these various memories create a sense of the incomprehensible decay, injury, and pain that result from war. Joe remembers the stories with a wry tone that gives a sense of the absurdity of each of the situations—such as the rumor about the man who lost his face only to return home and die at his wife's hands. In this sense, the use of the war in the text remains true to its use in the title of the novel: the war exists as a precondition for senseless and grotesque injury and

Shenandoah and Johnny Got His Gun share similarities from the plot to the characters. One instance of those similarities is the strikingly similar story of Joe in Johnny Got his Gun and Charlie in Shenandoah. Joe Bonham was a soldier in World War l being drafted into the war and forced to fight a war he had no part in. Joe was terribly injured in the war and was left without a face, arms, or legs and deaf. Charlie Anderson is a southern farmer who has 7 kids and a dead wife. He too is harassed by a war troubling his land but unlike Joe he manages to avoid it and doesn’t have to fight necessarily in the war. Both Joe and Charlie suffer the consequences of war in similar and in different ways but both nearly as devastating.

The horrors of war were depicted by the constant threats to the characters lives, the brutal conditions of the bad weather, hunger and combat. Soldiers had to battle the enemy along with nature. Soldiers would become stressed, paranoid and start losing their personalities. As Captain Miller says, “I just know that every man I kill, the farther away from home I feel.” This quote shows the mental toll on these soldiers.