How The Glorification Of War In Johnny Got His Gun Essay

In every American war combined, about 1.2 million soldiers have died fighting in battle. Many look past the effects and consequences that going to war can lead to and every soldier is assumed to be a hero. Others believe that killing anybody, whether they are innocent or on a battlefield, is in no way honorable. Writers who protest war use imagery, irony, and structure to explain the negative effects of battle.

To be engaged in war is to be engaged in an armed conflict. Death is an all too ordinary product of war. It is an unsolicited reward for many soldiers that are fighting for their country’s own fictitious freedom. For some of these men, the battlefield is a glimpse into hell, and for others, it is a means to heaven. Many people worry about what happens during war and what will become of their loved ones while they’re fighting, but few realize what happens to those soldiers once they come home. The short stories "Soldier's Home” by Ernest Hemingway and "Speaking of Courage” by Tim O'Brien explore the thematic after effects of war and how it impacts a young person's life. Young people who

Throughout time we have gone through many wars, and with these wars come death and destruction. Most people aren’t actually the ones fighting in wars but we are able to explore the world of war through novels and films. One classic novel it Johnny Got His Gun, by Dalton Trumbo, this novel follows young Joe Bonham as he goes to fight in World War I, only to end up severely injured and stuck in a hospital bed. Likewise in the 1965 American Civil war movie, Shenandoah the Anderson family wants no part in the war but are forced into it when their youngest son, Boy, is taken. Boy is forced to fight in the war, at the age of 16, and he has to face consequences from the war. Although Joe and Boy both experience very different life changing events

Kurt Vonnegut is able to put a man’s face on war in his short story, “All the King’s Horse ”, and he exemplifies that in a time of war, the most forgotten effect on nations is the amount of innocent lives lost in meaningless battle due to unjust rulers fighting each other against a nation’s will. As Americans, we are oblivious to the fact that we have people fighting every day for our country. In addition, we ignore the fact that we do a lot of collateral damage and hurt innocent people unintentionally in order to get what we want. Vonnegut shows the reader in Pi Ying’s own sadistic way of demonstrating how he feels about war brings attention to the point that war, while unruly and cruel, is nothing

An artist's job is to interpret, and express the aspects of life in a creative fashion. War has played a big part in shaping our human history, and many artists have portrayed their feelings about art through paintings, and even monuments. Whether it be to show; the joy of victory, the sorrow of defeat, or to educate the public on the gory realities of war. Art about war can also show us a great amount of history of the kinds of weapons that were used at the time. It is necessary for artists to interpret, and criticize all aspects of life; even ones as tragic as war, It can make the public more aware of what goes on in times of war.

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.

In a different fashion, Charlie is also similarly thrusted upon the knowledge that his way of life has been negatively affected by the war. While working on the farm like any other day, the neighbors slave, Gabriel, who was spending time with his son Boy, came with inauspicious news that Boy had been taken by Union soldiers. Here Charlie learns that his son who meant so much to him because he was born the day his wife died, has been taken which puts an immediate stop to his thinking that everything is okay. This further promits him, like Joe, to go and search for Boy who represents the past and normal life that has been taken away by war. Even though Joe and Charlie find out what the war has taken from them in unmistakably different ways, they both begin searching for a part of their previous life that has been forcibly taken away from them because of war.

Since he has chosen to go to war at a young age, he sees several things others do not want to see. Since being home, he lives on his own and does not bother looking for a wife because he thinks he is too old. Although he is only 23, he says he becomes old from seeing too much, old from too much life, and old from knowing too much. He is walking with a cane, and he passes blood. Charley does not think he will be alive any longer. In certain ways it makes him sad, but in other ways it makes him happy having to not remember all that he has gone through. He makes himself a picnic near the creek. While watching the water flow, he often wonders whether he should visit the others, and by others Charley means the people who got killed in the war. Charley keeps a weapon he took off of a confederate officer, who has been dead. He comes close to visiting the others because he wants the pain to go away, but now he decides not to leave. He is continuing to think about the pretty things instead of the bad things he thinks about

The Charlie Company is made up many different types of men in their teens and early twenties ranging from the boys who grew up in upper-class family with a very privileged life to boys that grew up in poor families. Many of these young men never imagined that they would be drafted into the Vietnam War and in turn it would change their lives forever. There were men that voluntarily enlisted into the Vietnam War like John Young. John Young, who was inspired by John F. Kennedy, was attending college when he decided that it was his calling to enlist in the military. John Young served as a squad leader in the 1st platoon. He came to war eager and ready to fight for his country. He thought that he was so smart and skilled that when he gets to Vietnam he will not lose many of his men, but he thought wrong. When he first arrived to Vietnam with his unit it did not take long until he started losing his men. At this time in America Uncle Sam was sending out drafts for young men aged late teens to early twenties to join the war. There was a problem with this draft because if you did not want to go to war you did not have to. Men that went to college did not have to go to war. This caused many people at this time to go to college and get a degree and maintain their grades. Men that were gay or had a doctors note from their doctor saying they were “injured” did not have to go to war either. Men that were

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

Since the beginning of time, humans have sought after power and control. It is human instinct to desire to be the undisputed champion, but when does it become a problem? Warfare has been practiced throughout civilization as a way to justify power. Though the orders come directly from one man, thousands of men and women pay the ultimate sacrifice. In Randall Jerrell’s “The Death of a Ball Turret Gunner”, Jarrell is commenting on the brutality of warfare. Not only does Jarrell address the tragedies of war, he also blames politics, war leaders, and the soldier’s acknowledgement of his duties. (Hill 6) With only five lines of text, his poems allows the reader to understand what a soldier can go through. With the use of Jerrell’s poem, The Vietnam War, and Brian Turner’s “Ameriki Jundee”, the truth of combat will be revealed.

Often the idea of war can be misleading. In many instances, war is seen as glorious and honorable. Many times people do not see the dark side and the true horrors of war. The novel Johnny got his Gun and the classic movie Shenandoah contradict these common beliefs through the thoughts and actions of the main characters. Joe is a man in the novel who lost his limbs, eyesight, hearing, and ability to talk due to war.

In the book by Margaret McMullan, How I Found The Strong, Frank’s brother, Henry, and Pa go fight in the war together. During the Civil War, thousands of fathers and their oldest sons would go to war together, causing their families to suffer. Fighting in the war was one way for a father and his son to bond. In a

War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, written by the talented author Chris Hedges, gives us provoking thoughts that are somewhat painful to read but at the same time are quite personal confessions. Chris Hedges, a talented journalist to say the least, brings nearly 15 years of being a foreign correspondent to this book and subjectively concludes how all of his world experiences tie together. Throughout his book, he unifies themes present in all wars he experienced first hand. The most important themes I was able to draw from this book were, war skews reality, dominates culture, seduces society with its heroic attributes, distorts memory, and supports a cause, and allures us by a

It can be hard to fully comprehend the effects the Vietnam War had on not just the veterans, but the nation as a whole. The violent battles and acts of war became all too common during the long years of the conflict. The war warped the soldiers and civilians characters and desensitized their mentalities to the cruelty seen on the battlefield. Bao Ninh and Tim O’Brien, both veterans of the war, narrate their experiences of the war and use the loss of love as a metaphor for the detrimental effects of the years of fighting.