Johnny Got His Gun Analysis

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

Influence of Early Life and War on Kurt Vonnegut Jr. to Encourage a Generation Against War

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.

Copious bullets, like that of torrential downpour, reign over the battlefield; a setting in which man created through dispute, engulfs each and every individual caught within it. Some are immediately spun into a downward spiral, while with others, it hits them in the midst -- even if they have built an immunity to war’s ways. Two fictional characters, both sharing a similar atmosphere, experience the true affects to war in their own ways. Although war never changes, the individuals do, no matter the situation. This is exemplified through the fictional tales, told by Liam O’Flaherty’s “The Sniper,” as well as Tim O’Brien’s “Where Have You Gone Charming Billy,” and as the main characters are to each their own story, they bear contradistinction to one another in the aspect of war, personality, and the emotional reactions to war.

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.

Many popular public speakers utilize repetition in their speeches to influence a more powerful statement, however, this also includes literature. Repetition comes in many forms that all change or implicate different meanings and emotions within a text. Dalton Trumbo uses this technique to envelope various themes in his stories, like Johnny Got His Gun. In the book Johnny Got his Gun, Dalton Trumbo utilizes repetition to illustrate the idiocy and brutality of war in order to demonstrate the true and appalling nature of modern warfare and the draft.

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

First, the reader must understand just what makes a good "war story". The protagonist of the novel, Tim O'Brien, gives us his

The short story that will be discussed, evaluated, and analyzed in this paper is a very emotionally and morally challenging short story to read. Michael Meyer, author of the college text The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature, states that the author of How to Tell a True War Story, Tim O’Brien, “was drafted into the Vietnam War and received a Purple Heart” (472). His experiences from the Vietnam War have stayed with him, and he writes about them in this short story. The purpose of this literary analysis is to critically analyze this short story by explaining O’Brien’s writing techniques, by discussing his intended message and how it is displayed, by providing my own reaction,

Whatever the reason may be, propaganda works with Joe. Although he is unlikely to find France on a map, he is likely to be able to explain in depth how terrible the Germans are because of propaganda. In Johnny Got His Gun, Joe is not happy that he was tricked into fighting a war that has nothing to do with him. Joe desperately wants to show people what war is really like and what the costs of war can be. One of Joe's primary anti-war attitudes is that war is encouraged by class inequality. This means the working class has a tendency to be the one who faces a greater consequence with regards to war, yet they do not benefit by any means. It likewise implies that the masters of war—those with influence and cash—can wage war at any time they want to because they are not the ones who have to fight (Trumbo 241). It is a rich man’s war, but a poor man’s fight. Joe thinks of the bigger picture: he is saying that one cannot deal with something as big as war without first dealing with the social conditions that make it possible. Joe feels cheated by society because this was not his war and he did not have any reason to join in the first place. In a way, society brainwashed Joe into feeling that this was his war and what war would bring for him.

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

Hundreds of bodies littered the ground. Sounds of explosions and endless gunfire filled the air. Soldiers, with their uniforms splashed in crimson, fought viciously and ruthlessly. Their main objective, which was to win the battle, took a backseat to their newfound desperation to stay alive. After all, war is not a game, especially one such as the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, and left its survivors haunted by a multitude of atrocious events. Terry Erickson’s father and George Robinson, who were two fictional characters from the short stories “Stop the Sun” and “Dear America”, respectively, were veterans of the Vietnam War. The differences and similarities between Terry’s father and George Robinson are striking, and they merit rigorous scrutiny.

A sequence of events leads up to Joe becoming almost completely isolated from the outside world. During his time in the isolated continent, Joe becomes addicted to narcotics; he escapes his pain and anguish by succumbing to detached and paralyzed state of mind. Throughout his journey in this secluded continent, he is faced with his hatred of the Germans and his desire to enact vengeance upon them for all that he has lost. When he meets a German geologist exploring the frozen tundra, he inadvertently kills him. Joe experiences ironic feelings of remorse after so many years spent obsessing over the destruction of the Germans. There was no gratification or fulfillment, for Joe, in the German man’s death. Joe felt repulsed and an abhorrence in himself for his

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.

To sum up, this novel narrates the journey of a soldier throughout the war in Iraq and his mind altering experience. The war represents a major downfall in his life in which he encounters many graphic scenes. Even though John describes his experiences in the war as a