Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo - Book Report/Review Example

Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo John got a gun is a novel by that talk about the happening in Joe life periods before the start of Great War and during the war. Joe is a victim of the war and has been hit by a shell and is lying in a hospital bed (Trumbo 8). Though doctors have amputated his four limbs, nose, jaws, and his face is deformed he still thinks of the past and present situations. He remembers the circumstances and the day his father died and the last moment he saw his girlfriend Kareen before joining other troops to fight in the Great War (Trumbo 18). He lies unconsciously, but with his mind functioning fully. He wonders what happened to him and why the doctors decided to save him while in such a bad conditions. Joe grew in the City of Shale where he had his entire childhood friend. However his parent would relocate to Los Angeles where he lived until he joined the army. Joe remembers his days as a young man and the food he used to enjoy. He remembers the time the airplane landed in Shale City and the time he had with his girlfriend Diana (Trumbo 10). Nevertheless he would later lose her one night to Bill Harper, who was one of his best friends (Trumbo 26). His account then shift from the past to the present as he regrets joining the war. He says that the war was not his interest, and he would have done other better things in his life. After a while in bed rest Joe realizes that he has been badly injured and treated. He realizes that he has been amputated. Furthermore, comes to term with reality after he finds out he cannot smell, hear, see and speak as his face has been damaged and replaced by musk. He wonders what motivated the doctors to spare his life. His only life is in his memory and the only activities that he has been remembering of his life and moment of nightmares. He does not know whether he is awake or when he is asleep. He remembers of his father and how he tendered his children and yet he had hardly had enough money. Moreover, his father tendered a beautiful garden in the city lot, but he did not get income out of it. Joe bitterly thinks he was foolish when he decided to fighting and the consequences he is undergoing through in a hospital bed. He resents the use of deceitfulness word such as liberty, freedom, democracy and decency. As he spent his days in the hospital bed, he decides to use the skin, the only organ that he is left with to feel of the outside world. His body is covered with a blanket only but the neck. He, therefore, hopes to feel of the sunrise and totally the nurses that look after him and also the days as they pass. After a year, he has counted 365 days and celebrates the New Year just in his mind as he has been used to celebrate Sundays with a walk to the woods (Muntz). In his fourth year, Joe is astonished that the hospital personnel are planning visitors to see him. He wonders after what they had done to him they still feel worth of their work. Nevertheless, when the visitors comes Joe feels one of them put something on his body, and he thinks that he is being given a medal. He is so angered and shock off the present while trying to remove his mush and show the visitors the cruelty of mankind and what has been done to him in the battlefield. Joe is sad because the officers in the field suffer tremendously while the general live unscathed. He then here the vibration of the visitors leaving and realizes that he can communicate to the world through vibration. However, when he does shake his head, the nurses attending him ignore him and diagnose him with seizures and is put him under sedation. When he is awake from sedation, he finds out that he had a new nurse and things are a lot better than before. The nurse is so kind that she tries to talk to him and because it was on a charisma she wishes Joe a merry Christmas. Joe nod in acceptance and began to use the Morse code with the new nurse. After staying with the nurse for a while, Joe starts to communicate using words. The nurse then finds an expert in the Morse code who could assist talking to Joe because he had no other methods of communicating his concerns. It is after communicating using the Morse code that Joe says that he is taken around the country to educate and showcase the realities of conflicts and war. However, Joe request is against the set down regulations. He feels betrayed by the same people that he fought for and the sacrifice he had given of his life. Joe then realises that he would become a hero of war if people came to know him and he would also send a strong message that would discourage people of the lower class to go to the battlefield for the glory of the upper class. The book by Trumbo depicts the medical profession and questions there medical ethics in that they purport to abide by. Joe after finding that he had been amputated questions the ethic of him staying alive only to be attended to year in year out. According to him it is not ethic to save a person who’s the only organs that functions in his body is his mind and the skin. He says that the works of doctors is unworthy and dirty. He fell that the doctor needed his consent to mutilate his body which they did not do (Trumbo 13). On the other hand, doctors have to do whatever humanly possible to save injured soldiers to showcases their experience in the medical field. According to the doctors, their purpose is not to save Joes life, but to keep him a life as a necessary problem. Joe argues that he had been slightly injured in the limb, but due to negligent his legs were affected by gangrene as the doctors operated on his head. The book offered criticism of the event of the World War I. The character played by Joe portrays the bad face of the war that leaves him physical and psychological damaged. Moreover, the author ensures that the reader understands that fighting is a crime. People should not fight for whatever reason because there are other avenues of addressing antagonist that has less damage than the war. Furthermore, Trumbo insists that though war is a crime there is also a crime committed to the younger people by the old generation. Trumbo expound on the things that fellow young people go through in life. He depicts of a troubled generation that has to lose their love to the world for other. The sacrifice made by Joe is not worth his life and that of the family he would have if he did not go to the battlefield. He is so troubled that he remembers all the things that he says last before going to his ruin. We learn so much from a sick man. He has pain of war and over his body. He is so painful because he is denied a chance to tell the outside world that war is evil and unnecessary. Joe wants to inform people that war is a class conflict of the upper class using the lower class to get what they want no matter the circumstances. The author uses irony to express his ideas that he does not like in human life. He narrates of an analogy of the airplane. He says that the airplane would help reduce the distance of people and nations. Moreover, it would enhance the social interaction and people would understand other people better than they did before and make them love each other. Mr Hargreaves says that the airplane brings a new dawn of peace, love and prosperity. These praises of the airplane do not mean so because it is the same machine that is used to drop missile shell that hit Joe (Trumbo 10). Trumbo stipulates simple and facile messages surrounding one character and brings home his theme. The book is well written that everybody who reads it understand the plot as where the writer is coming and where he is driving the story. For example, he talks of Joe fighting the war that was not for him and he question why he would care to fight and safe the world for a better democracy or liberty and freedom (Trumbo 13). Trumbo makes his message also artistically political (Trumbo 1). It would be wrong for the author to write of war and never support or criticize the political system of the time. Trumbo wrote the book at a period the world was starting the Second World War. The book got widespread support as it was aligned to the leftish who never agreed to the need of America entering into war with any nation. In conclusion, Trumbo through Joe makes the world know of the real enemy and the ethics behind engaging into war. Medical ethics in the military do not protect the interest of the upper class, but not to save the life of injured soldiers. Work Cited Muntz, Robert. Banned Books Week Featured Book: Johnny Got His Gun. Web. Uttyler.edu. 8th Oct. 2014. Web. 7th Mar. 2014. < http://library.uttyler.edu/blog/create-blog-entry-36>. Trumbo, Dalton. Jonny Got His Gun. Web. Libcom.org. Web. 7th Mar. 2014. < http://libcom.org/files/Johnny_Got_His_Gun.pdf>. Read More