Theme Of Johnny Got His Gun By Dalton Trumbo

Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun, a novel published at the height of World War II, tells the story of a World War I soldier who loses his limbs, eyes, nose, and mouth in battle. The narrative follows Joe Bonham’s thoughts and emotions as he realizes he is ostracized in his devastated body, cut off from communication to the outside world. By presenting the mindset of an annihilated soldier, Trumbo questions the morality of war and the demands of society. Trumbo authentically presents the disabilities of war and the new technologies that allow soldiers to survive catastrophic injuries, a theme that is prevalent among the soldiers returning home from today’s wars.
There is a new generation of military men and women: one comprised of soldiers

returning home with prosthetic and artificial body parts who have stories to tell. Drawing on Blackmore’s (2000) observations of “the generation of a cyborg world,” I will argue how society adapts to the increasing number of veterans who exhibit inescapable reminders of the atrocities of war due to their conspicuous injuries and display of manufactured body parts. Paying with their Bodies: American War and the Problem of the Disabled Veteran (2015), a book written by John M. Kinder, focuses on injured soldiers from World War I and discusses the modern implications of using images of disabled veterans as propaganda. By incorporating information from Trumbo’s novel with information from Kinder’s book, I will address the contemporary representations of disabled soldiers and veterans.
Trumbo’s novel uses both flashbacks and stream of consciousness to tell Bonham’s story. He slowly realizes the extent of his injuries. With the exception of his sense of touch, Joe loses all ability to communicate to the outside world and yet his mind works overtime as he tries to accept his situation and relay his thoughts. Martin Kich explains, “Nonetheless, his mind remains intact, and the novel presents his thoughts as he comes to terms with the horror that he is completely isolated in what remains of his own body.” Joe is stuck in his own mind, unable to escape his harsh realities. He spends his time thinking about his life before the war, craving time with his girlfriend Kareen, and trying to track the days that pass as he is clinging to life. In the novel, Joe states, “Lying on your back without anything to do […] you had plenty of time to think. You had time to figure things out. Things you never thought of before. Things like for example going to war” (Trumbo 113).
The use of machines to keep Bonham alive emphasizes the advancing technologies and the new ways the medical industry pieces together war survivors. With only machines keeping him alive, Joe realizes that he is, in every respect, dead due to his inability to do anything on his own except think. Trumbo writes, “ “He was the nearest thing to a dead man on earth. He was a dead man with a mind that could still think. He knew all the answers that the dead knew and couldn't think about. He could speak for the dead because he was one of them. He was the first of all the soldiers who had died since the beginning of time who still had a brain left to think with. Nobody could dispute with him. Nobody could prove him wrong. Because nobody knew but he” (122).
At the conclusion of the novel, Joe decides he wants to find a way to communicate to the outside world. He is desperate for social interaction and strenuously works to pass a message along to the nurses by banging his head on the pillow to spell out SOS using Morse code. “Joe’s desire, to move an idea from one mind to another, is the most exhausting, costly, unthinkable miracle that confronts him” (Blackmore 6). It takes many days before a nurse finally understands his attempts and gets someone to receive his message. Joe tells the doctor that he wants out. “Let me out he thought that’s all I want. I’ve been lying here for years and years in a room in a bed in a little covering of skin. Now I want out. I’ve got to get out” (Trumbo 230). “Like the text itself, Joe Bonham’s body is constrained, teetering between nature and culture and between life and death. When he finally conceives of a mode of escape from his prison, when he decides to ask through Morse code to “speak for the dead,” to be shown in public as the world’s best antiwar statement, his request is denied” (Abel 80).
The idea of using images of injured soldiers as propaganda is not a new concept; however, the opinions regarding these images has fluctuated with each war. For example, following the American Revolutionary War and during the American Civil War, images of wounded veterans were used to help the soldiers reconnect with other civilians. As the tensions of paranoia began to fade, these images created a sense of sympathy for the soldiers who carried permanent scars of the war. In his study Suffering Soldiers, historian John Resch argues that images of injured soldiers from the Continental army “evoked the sentiment of gratitude,” casting a respectable light on military servicemen and war (Casey 125). These images of injured veterans went on to “romanticized the patriotism of American soldiers through accounts of bravery and heroic suffering endured in combat and camp” (Casey 140).
Despite the well-received images at the beginning of the nation’s war experiences, the acknowledgement of wounded veterans did not always remain in the limelight. Starting with World War I and leading up to the First Gulf War, images of disabled veteran were avoided and shunned. Fearing that these images would detrimentally affect the way citizens viewed wartime activities, the censorship of illustrations portraying injured soldiers became very prominent. Johnny Got His Gun, with its graphic descriptions of the maimed Bonham, was removed from shelves out of fears that the novel would cast a negative light on war by those who read it, especially American soldiers fighting during World War II. In Joe’s mind, getting out not only means feeling alive again, but also being able to serve as a warning to those involved in war. “That would be a great thing to concentrate war in one stump of a body and to show it to people so they could see the difference between a war that’s in newspaper headlines and liberty loan drives and a war that is fought out lonesomely in the mud somewhere a war between a man and a high explosive shell” (Trumbo 232-233). Jacqueline Lawson argues, “Antiwar literature aims at debunking popular myths about war: The soldier as romantic hero, war as proving ground for manhood, and death in combat as the patriotic ideal.”
It’s no surprise that the end result of all of Joe’s unbearable work is a definitive rejection of his request.

With a concise response, “WHAT YOU ASK IS AGAINST REGULATIONS,” (Trumbo 242) Joe realizes the final casualty of war. “In one terrible moment he saw the whole thing. They wanted only to forget him. He was upon their conscience so they had abandoned him they had forsaken him” (Trumbo 244). Blackmore states, “Joe struggles against the pressure of the socius that bears down on him, the forces that want him silenced, that want the propaganda machine to run unhindered by resistant voices” (2). His efforts also do not come without consequences. Joe did not sign up for the war because he wanted to be a hero or gain power or even because he supported the cause. Joe joined the war because he was told to join the war. In the novel, Joe thinks about his rationale for joining the war. “He thought here you are Joe Bonham lying like a side of beef all the rest of your life and for what? Somebody tapped you on the shoulder and said come along son we’re going to war. So you went. But why?” (Trumbo 113). Blackmore’s argument is similar, stating that young men who do not support or show enthusiasm for today’s military actions are chastised as unpatriotic or cowards. Abel’s argument reflects the necessity to authentically describe Joe’s injuries and mental agony. He states, “the text cannot exist without the body, without the violence committed to the body; likewise the violence to the text, its censorship, would not exist without the portrayal of this injury to the body, which offended patriotic wartime sensibilities”

(80).