Johnny Got His Gun Essay

War is gruesome. War is brutal. War is horrible. These statements are definitely the main focus throughout the book, Johnny Got His Gun. This book reveals the harsh reality of war, which is usually not discussed. Johnny Got His Gun portrays how war can ruin someone's life or even leave them dead by revealing the true story of Joe Bonham or known as Johnny in the book. The book is narrated by Johnny, a soldier from World War I that has no legs, arms, or even a face due to a mortar shell hitting very close to him. He cannot hear, talk, or see but remains alive and conscious which influences him to have a great hatred for war. Johnny's negative thoughts about war are undoubtedly revealed throughout the novel.

The author of Johnny Got His Gun, Dalton Trumbo, was born in 1905 in Montrose, Colorado into a financially unstable family. Trumbo found his passion for writing when he began studying at the University of

Colorado. He wrote many short stories and articles which were published in magazines such as Vanity Fair and The Hollywood Spectator. In 1934, Trumbo was hired by the Warner Brothers as a reader in their story department, which began his long career in the film industry. After leaving Warners, he worked for Columbia Pictures, Paramount, and 20th Century-Fox. In 1939, Trumbo achieved his peak as a novelist with the antiwar story Johnny Got His Gun, which received a National Book Award. Dalton was one of the highest-paid writers in Hollywood in the 1940s. However, the successful novel gained some unwanted attention as well. Trumbo was a member of the Communist Party which led to problems and ultimately caused Trumbo to be backlisted by the heads of the major studios and he had to serve a year in prison.
Trumbo was inspired to write Johnny Got His Gun after reading an article about the Prince of Wales's visit to a Canadian veterans hospital to see a soldier who had lost all of his limbs and senses. The soldier whom suffered severe physical damage was Joe Bonham, a soldier from World War I. Also Trumbo was influenced by his father and the rest of his community at a young age because they voted for Woodrow Wilson to keep America out of the war, thus creating negative thoughts about war for Trumbo. Therefore, Trumbo persisted to write an antiwar book, which allowed the public to realize there are many downsides to war.
Johnny Got His Gun heavily emphasizes the unequal bargain of war.

The novel suggest that people like Johnny have nothing to gain by fighting in a war on terms of others. Johnny is skeptical of the words "liberty" and "freedom" because he knows they can shift in meaning and often only benefit a few people, "Somebody said let's go out and fight for liberty and so they went and got killed without ever once thinking about liberty. And what kind of liberty were they fighting for anyway? How much liberty and whose idea of liberty?" Johnny explains that the liberty the soldiers are fighting for are likely to be unknown. He also states that liberty is not promised, therefore, it is not worth risking the liberties someone already has, "I like the liberty I've got right here the liberty to walk and see and hear and talk and eat and sleep with my girl. I think I like that liberty better than fighting for a lot of things we won't get and ending up without any liberty at all." This shows that the pain, injuries, and deaths are not worth an abstract cause such as

liberty.
In the novel,
Johnny Got His Gun is clearly an antiwar novel, however it is a novel that I would recommend everyone reading because it is more than just a book, it reveals what most soldiers and their families have to deal with daily. Dalton Trumbo achieves the portrayal that war is horrible by effectively using one of the most gruesome examples. Johnny Got His Gun definitely enabled me to view war from a very different perspective. After reading this novel, I now have an even greater amount of respect for those soldiers who fought for our "liberties" and "freedoms."