Johnny Got His Gun Analysis

The author, Tim O'Brien, is writing about an experience of a tour in the Vietnam conflict. This short story deals with inner conflicts of some individual soldiers and how they chose to deal with the realities of the Vietnam conflict, each in their own individual way as men, as soldiers.

Stated in Ponyboy´s though, “ Johnny's hand went to his back pocket and I remembered his switchblade” (Hinton pdf 47). It shows that Johnny had a concealed weapon the whole time. Meaning that he could attack anyone within his reach. Showing that he was liable for any incident to happen where he went. Even though Johnny might have concealed a weapon, he saved Ponyboy's life when one of the Socials tried to drown him before he blacked out. It showed that Johnny was trying to stop the Social and get away from the scene that he did not cause. He and Ponyboy were only trying to walk around the park without trying to cause any trouble. Johnny is innocent due to events that happened, “ ... scared him. … most law-abiding of us, now carried in his back pocket a six-inch switchblade.” (Hinton pdf 30). Therefore it shows that what Bob did to make Johnny scared of his own shadow, take extra precaution. He used his brain to see the possibility that Bob could attack him again. It should not be counted as a murder weapon but as a self-defense as how small Johnny was and how large the chance that Bob might attack him

In Johnny Got His Gun, Trumbo illustrates the relationship between a father and his son as it changes through an internal transition that occurs in the son. The son’s natural and universal transition is conveyed through the nature of the campsite. The fishing rod symbolizes the close relationship between the father and the son, and illustrates how two people can grow apart physically while still preserving their tight bond with each other.

Tim O’Brien’s book “The Things They Carried” epitomizes the degradation of morals that war produces. This interpretation is personified in the characters who gradually blur the line dividing right and wrong as the motives for war itself become unclear. The morality of soldiers and the purpose of war are tied also to the truth the soldiers must tell themselves in order to participate in the gruesome and random killing which is falsely justified by the U.S government. The lack of purpose in the Vietnam War permanently altered the soldier’s perspective of how to react to situations and in most cases they turned to violence to express their frustration.

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.

There is no doubt that war is evil in every way. It is full of hatred and conflict and nothing comes out of it. It brings death, destruction, and the worst out of people. In a pacifistic yet desperate tone, Dalton Trumbo promotes anti-war ideals by explaining the life of a young soldier after he got affected by war in his novel Johnny Got His Gun. While some individuals’ point of view match with Trumbo’s, others may disagree with his reasoning. The controversial issue of the acceptance of war is talked about everybody, even popular artists. Some singers express their opinions on war via their songs, like George H. Cohan in his song “Over There (Johnny, Get Your Gun)”, and the band Metallica with their song “One”. Each sends different messages depending on the setting, their music’s genre, and diction used in the making of the lyrics.

Many people go into things blind without any thought process behind their actions which will often lead to the worst consequences. Many novels and movies reveal this message clearly. In the novel Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo, Joe, a young soldier drafted into the war, suffered extreme injures both mentally and physically after battle due to not fully knowing what to expect going into war. Likewise, in Shenandoah, a 1965 Civil War movie, Boy, the youngest in the Anderson family, mistakenly gets forced into the line of battle and is faced with the truth behind the whole war at a very young age and faces several losses from his journey. Despite the fact that Joe and Boy both suffered different consequences, they

As I read With Every Drop of Blood, I wondered why Johnny would go assist the Confederates in the Civil War, even after his own father told him not to. The authors of the book are trying to show you that people will judge you simply by the color of your skin, but will change once they get to know you. Johnny is a young man in the south who helps his family while his father is fighting for the Confederates in the Civil War. This all changed when his dad came home wounded and told Johnny that he didn’t want him to go away from his family. Johnny went off anyways and was captured by a black soldier named Cush who at first Johnny hated, but later got to know Cush and they became close.

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

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.

The injuries Joe suffers from alone is sending a very anti-war message by revealing the dangers and the results that come with serving in the war and Joe is considered lucky just to be alive. Through Joe we also listen to the way he personally was abused by society, how he was forced into war to fight in a war that was to protect the money and interests of the wealthy, who were able to pay their way out of service. This is evident through out the book when Joe makes statements such as,“He lay there and thought oh Joe Joe this is no place for you. This was no war for you. This thing wasn't any of your business [...]

JGHG 1st Constructed Response Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun is about WWI. The cost of war was one of the major themes that was present throughout the first ten chapters of the novel. War can be seen as good or bad depending on one’s perspective, but one thing is certain, there will be consequences. War changes a person, and things will never return to the way it used to be.

In this essay, I will discuss how Tim O’Brien’s works “The Things They Carried” and “If I Die in a Combat Zone” reveal the individual human stories that are lost in war. In “The Things They Carried” O’Brien reveals the war stories of Alpha Company and shows how human each soldier is. In “If I Die in a Combat Zone” O’Brien tells his story with clarity, little of the dreamlike quality of “Things They Carried” is in this earlier work, which uses more blunt language that doesn’t hold back. In “If I Die” O’Brien reveals his own personal journey through war and what he experienced. O’Brien’s works prove a point that men, humans fight wars, not ideas. Phil Klay’s novel “Redeployment” is another novel that attempts to humanize soldiers in war. “Redeployment” is an anthology series, each chapter attempts to let us in the head of a new character – set in Afghanistan or in the United States – that is struggling with the current troubles of war. With the help of Phil Klay’s novel I will show how O’Brien’s works illustrate and highlight each story that make a war.

"Why is propaganda so much more successful when it stirs up hatred than when it tries to stir up friendly feeling? " asked the British philosopher Bertrand Russell in 1930. Whatever the reason may be, propaganda is successful with Joe, who may not be able to locate France on a map, but who has certainly heard about how nasty those Germans are. In Johnny Got His Gun, Joe is not happy that he was duped into fighting a war that has nothing to do with him; he now wants to show people what war is actually like and what its real costs are. Why was he manipulated, to begin with?

She struggles to allow Joe go off to battle, and tells him to run away with instead in attempts to pressure him into not going off to battle. Before Kareen and Joe spend the night together, Kareen says, “... oh Joe I wish you’d run away and not go” (Trumbo 34). She does this because she is terrified of her life without Joe, and worried for Joe’s safety knowing the odds that he’ll come back alive. Along with this she once again tells him not to go the next day during the train scene, “Don’t go Joe run away they’ll kill you and you know it