Johnny's Struggle Against His Disease

Johnny didn’t want to die. He felt like he hadn’t done enough and lived long enough. He was only sixteen years old. Johnny felt like it wasn’t fair.

Johnny Gunther was a sensitive, intelligent, selfless, courageous teenager who battled a brain tumor. After Johnny receives his first x-ray, he murmured his words to Frances, his mother. In his diary on Monday, 21st, he wrote, “Oh how tired I feel.” (Gunther 183) that expressing Johnny constantly shielded his parents and others from his secret pains, and he did not let his parents worrying about him. Beneath his outward bravery, Johnny seemed aware that he would die at that early stage and he was fearful about his illness, but Johnny's fear did not center so

The novel Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo, is a novel that describes the life of Joe, the main character, and how he seems to manage his disabilities after he had fought in the war. Throughout the course of the war, Joe had lost all of his senses, despite touch, and every single limb, after he had gotten hit by a bomb. Once Joe wakes up, he begins falling in and out of consciousness and begins to experience difficulty finding purpose in life after his incident had occurred. Surely enough though, Joe had found a purpose for living again and began to try and communicate with his medical staff, found pleasure in reliving past memories, and became angered when it came to the government's role in supplying him with comfort and “honor”. Along with these ideas of self-identity and warfare corruption, flashback, characterization, and author’s purpose are all literary devices that work to enforce the ideas of identity and warfare. Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun utilizes flashback, characterization and author’s purpose to develop the two central themes that hardship is found in finding one’s self identity and that the true effects of warfare are much worse than the public perceives it as.

The doctors soon realize that pony boy and two-bit were so desperate, even after countless times of pleading, they are finally allowed to see Johnny who was still suffering and struggling to stay alive. From the doctor’s expression, Pony-boy assumed the Johnny didn’t make it out alive. Remarkably, Johnny made it out alive, but he still has trouble speaking or moving because if he does any of those, it would cause agonizing pain. Johnny was happy to see them. Tim Shepard (the leader of a big greaser gang) stopped by to pay Johnny a visit and would soon visit Dallas too. Johnny claims that he’s afraid. The thought of death at his age scares him. He is petrified of his fear. Pony-boy disagrees with Johnny’s thoughts and tells his that he wouldn’t die. Johnny’s mother soon comes to visit, told by the nurse, and then Johnny decides that he doesn’t want to see his mother. Then Johnny’s skin begins to turn pale, and in no time he soon passes out. Two-bit comes attempts to go in the Johnny’s room to visit him, but the nurse states that he’s not allowed nor is his friend. Johnny’s mum remains in the waiting room after she was told that she wasn’t able to see Johnny. She continues to argue with the nurses. Johnny’s mother furiously blames Pony-boy and Two-bit for what had happened to her son. Meanwhile, Dally was really happy to see them. He says Tim Shepard came by to

Johnny is characterized as being paranoid at all times. Before being beaten by a group of Socs, Johnny was still incredibly jumpy from being abused by his parents. After he was attacked, he became even more

Johnny once was a teen who wasn't cowardly, and stood up for his gang. He was a good man in a rumble and kept his mouth shut around the police, but things changed when he was jumped by the Socs. The assault left him more anxious than ever, and ended up carrying a six-inch switchblade in his back pocket, despite that he was the most law-abiding of the gang. In addition, Johnny didn't do well in school, he had failed a year in school and never made good grades (Hinton 65). But even so, Johnny is more than a quiet, anxious kid who does poorly in school. Notably, when Ponyboy and Johnny were hiding in the church, the pair occasionally reads a book called Gone with the Wind in order to pass the time. While they were reading, Ponyboy remarked, "It amazed me how Johnny could get more meaning out of some of the stuff in there than I could--- I was supposed to be the deep one... and I guess his teachers thought he was just plain dumb. But he wasn't. He was just a little slow to get things, and he liked to explore things once he did get them" (Hinton 65). This shows that he is able to comprehend the message and/or significance of a story or concept, albeit it takes him a long period of time. Although he was high-strung, quiet, and seemingly believed to be dumb by his teachers, Johnny is, in truth, quite reflective and

Johnny himself was basically protecting the universe and in doing so lost his mind. Even when he is returned to a reset Earth with his “sanity” he is still shown to be crazy through one of his first thoughts being to cut off a cheerleaders legs. The overall events that occurred left an irreversible scar on his psyche and he continues to act as before for a while until the behavior steadily dwindles until he is ready to try to repress these psychotic

First is his family, his family does not care or like Johnny. Two-bit, Soda, Darry, Pony, and expressly Dally are his true family. In the book they say,”He would have run away a million times if we hadn't been there.” It show how bad his house was that he needed to stay at a friends house. Second is after he kills Bob and he has to run away to the church. He is really broken by this in a way that he could be put in jail or be killed and how fast he needed to get away from the park. Johnny had gone through killing someone and when Dally said “ Man, I thought New York was the only place I could get mixed up in a murder.” It show how Johnny did not like to be called a murderer and having to live with killing someone. Third thing is actually being broken by the church and fire. He has crushed in the fire when the church collapsed on him. He had third degree burns and a broken back bone. He was actually broken which lead him to

I felt my face getting red hot as I raced down the hospital hallway. I bit my lip, slamming into the wall. I pushed myself back and ran into an open elevator. I tried to study the floor numbers but my vision was blurry from the tears building up in my eyes.

Having run 5k’s before, his struggles are very understandable. It is pictured as if I may be able to put myself in his position. Johnny knows that he is really the army’s last hope. Understanding this, Johnny pushes through his pain and discouragement. This short story reads, “The nights of little or fitful sleep, the days of too little food and water, were beginning to affect him now, and he began to take refuge from exhaustion and pain in something at times close to unconsciousness”(480).

As a future healthcare professional working as a physical therapist, one of the most important aspects of the job is getting patients back to the functionality they were at before their injury. This is the main goal of the physical therapist, but ultimately may not always be possible due to their sustained injury. In this case, it is the physical therapist’s responsibility to specify what they should expect to regain the ability to do, but also it is important to establish that they will have to alter their lifestyle to cope with the things that they will not be able to do again. This approach is important because if done incorrectly, it could damage the patient’s perspective, and the long-term consequences could result in a poor quality of life. Whereas, if done correctly, the patient could establish a firm understanding in what they will regain and what they will no longer be able to do, allowing them to cope and re-establish goals and their definition of success, permitting for a better quality of life due to the change in perspective. This argument is present in the novel, Johnny Got His Gun. This novel, written by Dalton Trumbo, displays the characteristics of Joe, a war veteran who was badly hurt in battle. The stream of consciousness demonstrates Joe’s thoughts and how something in the present connects him to other memories that remind him of what he is experiencing. This allows the audience to interpret his experiences and break down his memories into his feelings. Joe is not able to cope immediately with his injuries sustained because of the inability of the doctors to communicate with him, which lessens Joe’s

Luke 16:10 “He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much”.

This quote is from the scene of the fire at the church, when Johnny was putting his life on the line to save the children. With no regard or concern for his safety,he stayed inside the burning building until every last child was out of the burning building. "Johnny wasn't behaving at all like his old self", he was more brave, brave enough to risk his life so that he could save others. I never expected to see this side of Johnny, I never even knew that it existed. Johnny is in critical condition now and it's a matter of life or death,will he make it? Either way, he'll be a hero.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have to acknowledge a significant personal bias before discussing what I would do as a judge in this scenario. I simply do not see this as a serious offense. I do not think that stealing candy bars is a gateway to serious criminal behavior. In fact, I believe that this type of low-level criminal behavior is something that most children exhibit at some point in time. While a twelve year old is certainly old enough to appreciate that this behavior is inappropriate, there is also substantial evidence suggesting that a twelve year old's impulse control is not nearly as developed as an adult's. Therefore, while I would do my job as a judge and determine a sentence for the child, I have to admit that I would find it an incredible waste of resources to spend the time and effort to prosecute a 12 year old over two stolen candy bars. A much more appropriate scenario would have been for this to be handled between the store and the child, with the child having to work off, not only the cost of his theft, but also punitive costs, by performing work for the store owner. That would have offered retribution to the store owner, punishment for the child, and a lesson about stealing, without providing the stigma of criminalization to a child stealing candy bars.

Narratives, even those that are nonfiction, are incapable of being a chronicle of unbiased facts. Instead, authors use tools to compose a reality for the reader, which undeniably affects how the story is interpreted. This is demonstrated by Oliver Sacks’ book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat in the chapter “The Lost Mariner,” in which the doctor describes one of his patients, Jimmie, who suffers from Korsakov’s syndrome. This disease has caused Jimmie to believe that it is 1945 and he is 19, while in reality it is the 1970s and he is 49. His short term memory lasts for less than a minute, meaning that Jimmie can make no new memories, and therefore, no new relationships, connections, or stories. He is described by Sacks as a “man without a past (or future), stuck in a constantly changing, meaningless moment.” “The Lost Mariner” includes elements of narrative including canonicity and breach and particularity to tell a successful narrative that presents Sacks’ interpretation of Jimmie as a tragic hero.