Example Essays Home

FAQ

Acceptable Use Policy

Tech Support

LOG IN!

Click HERE for Instant Access

This is a free preview of the paper.

Join Now
Log In

Johnny Got His Gun

Johnny Got His Gun is written as a literal stream of consciousness, without pause or punctuation, almost as your very own thoughts and feelings. It lacks the confinement of grammar and even chronological order. In Joe’s prison he can’t see, hear, speak, smell or move much, but he still has the ability to think and feel. Ironically in a world where all physical feelings are lost, emotional feeling is the strongest element of the novel. We are thrust into Joe's mind and with him we slowly relive memories of a life long ago.

What is interesting of Trumbo`s style is that every memory Joe has of the past is brought on by something going on in the present, at that very moment. When Joe had a fever and felt extremely hot, he recalled working in the Uintah desert one summer. When Joe felt very light and that he was drowning, he realized he had no legs. When Joe is plagued by constant ringing in his ears from being deaf, he remembered how the phone rang the day his father died. In a way Trumbo is tying the past and the present together. It not just one story of a time long ago, it a story of the moment that is still happening as the reader reads. The feelings and thoughts of Joe are so close to you, and yet they are dis

The style, in which Trumbo introduces Joe to the readers, is by letting the readers get to know Joe. By telling about Joe’s early life and experiences, Joe becomes the everyman. He shares similar experiences, feelings and desires with the readers. Joe wants what we want, which to live.” There’s no word worth your life. I would rather work in a coal mine deep under the earth and never see sunlight and eat crusts and water and work twenty hours a day. I would rather do that than be dead. I would trade democracy for life. I would trade independence and honor and freedom and decency for life. I will give you all these things and you give me the power to walk and see and hear and breathe the air and taste my food. You take the words. Give me back my life." (118)This is very clever on Trumbo`s part because the readers can identify themselves with Joe before they know the extent of his condition and have a chance to reject him or pity him as any other victim of war. The author purposely wants this to hit the reader close to home. He wants the readers to think that they could end up like Joe. And mostly he wants the readers to hate war.