Johnny Got His Gun
by Dalton Trumbo
Award: National Book Winner 1939
Date Read: May 7, 2021
If any book I have read described the actual physical costs of war like Johnny Got His Gun, this novel erased those from my mind. I have read of the POW experience continuously and the experiences of those on the battlefield, but this work describes the physical sacrifice soldiers experience through limbs and quality of life after the fighting stops.
Having been blasted from a trench by a mortar shell, Joe Bonham is literally trapped inside his body. He has lost both arms, both legs and his face, rendering him blind, deaf and mouthless. He requires constant care for toileting, feeding, changing his dressings and every single function of life. He cannot communicate and the routine of his caregivers and his own mind become his entire world.
Trumbo makes the valid argument that these boys are sacrificing life and limb for a word – “freedom.” While freedom is important, it cannot be measured or touched. It is a concept that lives in the mind and there’s “… no word worth your life.”
As difficult as it is to imagine living without eyes or ears or limbs, Trumbo provides, what I would imagine, is a very realistic experience. Particularly as Joe tries to orient himself in time, meticulously timing the visits of his nurses to obtain some sense of time passing. Imagining living the rest of your live this way made me claustrophobic and wondering what kind of life is really available to someone in his condition.
Once he is finally able to communicate by tapping his head in Morse Code, he wants to become a sideshow and show what war is truly about. It is about the atrocities we perpetrate against men both on and off the battlefield. He wants to become essentially the mascot for war. This is a brilliant novel and a stark reminder to us all of the real consequences of failed diplomacy.
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