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Chapter 16
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Johnny Got His Gun, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Horrors of War
The Value of Life
Elites vs. Common People
Time and Memory
Summary
Analysis
Joe wakes up feeling like he’s coming out of a hangover. As soon as he wakes up, he’s tapping SOS with his head against the pillow. He stops, however, when he realizes he has a new day nurse. Joe imagines the nurse looking at him for the first time, having been told what to expect but still not believing it. He’s excited and hopeful that this new nurse will finally understand him. He doesn’t know if the old day nurse is gone for good, but he wants to make the most of this opportunity.
The beginning of this chapter recalls the very first chapter of the book, perhaps hinting at how this chapter contains a new start for Joe. The arrival of the new day nurse is perhaps also a pun on how Joe is about to start a “new day,” metaphorically speaking. Despite his recent discouragements, Joe remains determined to communicate with the outside world.
Themes
Before Joe can do anything, however, he feels the new day nurse touching his bare chest. He realizes after a while that she is writing letters. Finally, he puts the message together: “Merry Christmas.” The old day nurse must be away for the holiday. Joe feels like he’s suddenly heard a beautiful sound after years of silence—someone has finally broken through to him.
The arrival of the new day nurse is the first time in several years that Joe has learned what day it is in the outside world. Once again, this chapter calls back to the beginning of the book (where Joe dreamed of working in the Los Angeles bakery just before Christmas and learning that his father died).
Themes
Joe recalls his mother reading him “’Twas the Night Before Christmas.” He recites the whole thing from memory, interspersing related memories of how he spent Christmas with his family in Shale City. Whenever his mother finished reading, the whole family would be quiet for a while. His mother would then reach for a different book that told the story of Jesus’s birth in Bethlehem.
Once again, Joe’s mother plays a comforting role in Joe’s memory, connecting him to his childhood and to tradition through the classic poem “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas.” Finally communicating with another person (the new day nurse) causes Joe to remember a time from his past when he felt more connected to people.
Themes
Joe imagines he’s seeing the nativity story in real time, watching Mary and Joseph go to Bethlehem where Jesus will be born. Just like in the Bible, Mary and Joseph can’t find a place to stay for the night, so they end up staying in a stable, although Joe modernizes some details of the story, imagining the innkeeper from the Bible as a “hotel manager” who is worried that Mary and Joseph will cause a problem with his insurance.
Joe’s religious hallucination here is more coherent than his previous one about Jesus out on a train in the desert. Earlier, Joe compared his situation in the hospital to famous prisoners and enslaved people from history, and in this dream, Joe humorously combines past and present in a different way, updating the nativity story to fit with modern conventions. All of these combinations of past and present emphasize how some human truths are universal and timeless. In his re-telling of the nativity story, Joe sees the nativity as yet another conflict between authority and underdogs, with Mary and Joseph representing underdogs and the "hotel manager” being the person in power.
Themes
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Mary gives birth to Jesus in the manger. Somewhere far away, a shepherd who’s just trying to get some sleep sees a shining light and realizes there’s a new star in the sky, which he follows. Along the way, the shepherd runs into three foreign men with camels. He’s surprised because he thinks they look too wealthy to have to pay taxes (which is why Mary and Joseph had to come back to Bethlehem). When the shepherd finally gets to the manger, he’s so surprised that he falls to his knees. Somewhere far off in a palace in the Roman Empire, a man nearly wakes up, wondering why he’s having such disturbing dreams.
As with the previous passage, Joe’s dream here follows the same general plot as the Biblical nativity story, but it adds modern details, like the shepherd who just wants to sleep and the wealthy kings (a version of the Three Magi) who want to avoid paying taxes. The mysterious sleeping figure in the palace at the end of this passage seems to be King Herod (who, like the Biblical figure, sleeps uneasily because he fears that one day Jesus will usurp him), although it could also be another instance of Joe seeing himself from the outside.
Themes
