Johnny Got His Gun Thesis

On top of that, not only does Joe face physical consequences from the war, but Joe also suffers mentally from the war. In the explosion Joe not only loses his arms and legs but he also loses his sight, hearing, and throat. This leaves Joe with difficulties communicating and unable to move himself. Joe has no one to keep him company as he lays in bed day after day, not even knowing when it is day or when it is night. Joe struggles with this mentally and this leads him to go into a mentally unstable state.Joe has to overcome these obstacles of not being able to tell time and not being able to communicate, but this takes time and in the meantime Joe starts to suffer mentally. Joe ends up spiralling into a dark hole where he gives up on hopes of life and he wishes that someone would come and kill him. Not only is Joe suffering mentally because of his isolation but throughout the war he has seen a lot of gruesome deaths and treatments of bodies after the person is killed. All of the images he saw during the war as people were killed and left for animals take a toll on someone's mental state. Unlike most people Joe isn’t able

"You just don 't know," she said. "You hide in this little fortress, behind wire and sandbags, and you don 't know what it 's all about. Sometimes I want to eat this place. Vietnam. I want to swallow the whole country—the dirt, the death—I just want to eat it and have it there inside me. That 's how I feel. It 's like . . . this appetite. I get scared sometimes—lots of times—but it 's not bad. You know? I feel close to myself. When I 'm out there at night, I feel close to my own body, I can feel my blood moving, my skin and my fingernails, everything, it 's like I 'm full of electricity and I 'm glowing in the dark—I 'm on fire almost—I 'm burning away into nothing—but it doesn 't matter because I know exactly who I am. You can 't feel like that anywhere else."” (O’ Brien 80-81). Tim O’ Brien shows how being in contact with the war can change a person so pure and innocent to a person who isn’t in connection with themselves and is forever trapped inside their own mind. Also it shows how the people who can’t handle the rough environment of war can have a terrible reaction and loose themselves. He also shows how the war changes you mentally making it hard for you to tell if the is the real you or just a persona you took when you couldn’t handle it anymore and needed to mask your broken soul.

In the search of what war has taken from both Joe and Charlie, they find auspicious halfway points that give the impression that their main goal is coming within reach. Joe realizing that through the finding of time, he can begin to reconnect himself to the world, starts to formulate ideas on how he can accomplish this. After weeks, months, maybe years of trial and error, Joe finally conjures up the idea to use the few exposed patches of skin on his neck to feel the

Joe’s understanding of war in Johnny Got His Gun is very similar to Boy’s in the sense that he doesn’t really understand what he would be fighting for in a battle. One example of this is when Joe is at the train station with his family awaiting his send-off to war. During this send off Joe didn’t really question why he was going to war or what he would be doing in war. He went without and hesitation which shows that his

Dalton Trumbo, author of Johnny Got His Gun, is known for his unique style of writing. Many acclaimed authors of books such as Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice have a formal writing style , on the other hand, Trumbo’s is informal. It consists of short sentences and punctuation techniques. This writing style is what sets Trumbo apart from others because this writing style is difficult to execute and it is hard to apply to other works of literature. His book, Johnny Got His Gun has won the award for “National Award for Most Original Book”. This book is about a soldier named Joe who has become handicapped after a bomb blast and experiences flashbacks which reflect back onto his past and present time. The authors’ style of writing affects the way a reader interprets the story through the use of literary elements and literary devices. Fine

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

The effects of this issue are further reflected upon in Tim O’Brien’s war story The Things They Carried, where Vietnam War era veteran O’Brien narrates his fictional account of the war and its effects on its combatants as a way to cope with the inflicted grief and regret of battle. Throughout the story and through other veterans’ accounts, it is evident how storytelling can be an effective medium to assuage these mental effects of war on a veteran. Most prominently, war’s effects on soldiers are mainly physical with disabilities causing a lasting effect on those who once fought and now wish to adapt to civilian life. However, the idea of not being able to adapt completely lies with the lesser known effects of war inflicted disabilities, with PTSD mentally scarring soldiers for periods of their life and depression following suit. Like how hospitals and bandages heal bullet wounds, O’Brien proves how writing and storytelling serve as remedies to patch up the mental wounds caused by war.

An accurate portrayal is given from the point of view of someone that is trying to give a truthful and realistic account of a situation. The person must look past other outside influences and give their view and feelings on the subject in order to produce an accurate portrayal. The Things They Carried contained many accurate portrayals of the soldiers who were fighting in Vietnam. The novel opened up to those who have not experienced war and let the reader see the effects of war on soldiers and the soldier’s interpretation on what they went through. Although The Things They Carried is a fiction novel, it gives a truthful depiction of how battle, combat, and the entire presence of war affects a person and alters them in many ways. O’Brien reflected on when he “There was that coldness inside of me. I wasn’t myself. I felt hollow and dangerous,” he realized that war had changed him into being a more “cold” person (207). In this situation, he knew he was guilty and went from courageous to a coward in only a few chapters. We have one select person telling their experience that may not be considered historically accurate because of bias or exaggeration, although we are still their hearing their accurate portrayal of what happened and how it affected

In Tim O’Brien’s historical fiction novel The Things They Carried, O’Brien uses a character also called Tim O’Brien to tell about experiences from the Vietnam War (1954-57). In the chapter, “How to Tell a True War Story”, O’Brien states “a true war story is never moral.” (65) War is not only horrid and unsightly, it also affects a soldiers’ mental make-up. Filled with death and gore, the Vietnam War has the capability to leave soldiers physically and mentally unstable. O’Brien begins his journey as a frightened, inexperienced young man, terrified of the great dishonor that follows evading the war. Tim O’Brien departs the Vietnam War full of remorse then tells short stories throughout the novel, The Things They Carried, about the Vietnam war as a coping skill. To show vivid emotions O’Brien uses the novel to fill in the blanks of his memories. Indulging in The Things They Carried is comparable to sitting in a living room, having a conversation with a war veteran.

In an attempt to take away some of the guilt he has placed upon himself from the Vietnam War, O’Brien tells his tales –in the fictional book The Things They Carried- of the many challenges he faced as a soldier. In On the Rainy River, through the illusions on the banks of the river he sees his past, present and future each memory reveals a part of him. O’Brien’s thoughtful story about death -shown in The Man I Killed- illustrates that the jungles of Vietnam blur boundaries between hallucinations and actuality. The killing of soldiers both American and Vietnamese feed into the disillusions and sensations built up from war, but soldiers use an “anesthetic” to shelter themselves from everything that goes on.

The effects of war are devastating for those who experience it. The wake of destruction left behind by bloody conflicts can traumatize any onlooker; those who face the fighting firsthand are often permanently affected by the horrors they witness. Frequently, combatants require special treatment for the psychological torment that can follow intense fighting. Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five explores the harmful effects of isolation, imprisonment, and oppression through a soldier’s perspective.

In the novel Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo, Trumbo uses excessive description, repetition, and flashbacks to develop the theme in times of distress, humans uncontrollably remember the better times in their lives.

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

This quote is from the very end of Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun, which is an antiwar novel about a man who was severely injured and has to live out the rest of his life in a hospital bed, unable to use any of his senses. He wants to be a constant reminder of what really happens during battle and he wants people to look at him and to be afraid of what could happen to their children or themselves. Johnny represents people’s fears and portrays them in a way that no one could in words.

Joe was feeling stressed. So many wounded soldiers were coming into the hospital on a daily basis Joe and Simon could care for most of the men, but some died. They