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Chapter 4
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
At the hospital, things in Joe’s mind melt together like clouds. He feels like he’s floating on his back in the Colorado River, which passes through Shale City. As he floats, he imagines being back with Kareen in her room and begging her to stay near him. He fears she’ll drown if she gets too far away. Suddenly, Joe feels like he’s sinking and starting to drown himself. He keeps sinking and can’t even struggle.
Once again, swimming and floating imagery suggests Joe’s powerlessness. Joe is powerless not only within the context of being drafted to fight in World War I—he is also powerless to control the workings of his own mind. Joe longs for Kareen because she represents perhaps his last moment of safety and normalcy before going to war.
Themes
Rockets and explosions shoot in front of Joe’s eyes, as he feels like he’s drowning just a few feet from the surface. Then it all stops, and Joe feels at peace, as if he’s finally drowned (although he hasn’t really). He might be deaf, but at least he’s alive and can’t feel pain. He wonders why the nurses have him propped up at an angle instead of lying flat. His lower body feels much lighter than his heavy chest. He tries to kick to move to a better position before realizing that he doesn’t have legs anymore.
Just as Joe’s lack of arms signifies his lack of power and ability to work, his lack of legs signifies how he has no escape from his current situation. Although the doctors and nurses take care of Joe, they also control his life, and the more time Joe spends in the hospital, the more he begins to see the potentially sinister side of this arrangement.
Themes
Joe wants to yell with fear after realizing he has no arms or legs, but he can’t—he doesn’t even have a mouth with jaws or a tongue. He can’t even swallow and feels like someone is smothering him. He knows that if he’s missing so many body parts he must be dying, but he’s still curious about his condition, which lets him know that he’s not dead yet. He figures the space that used to be his mouth and nose is now just a hole covered with bandages. He realizes the hole is so big that he doesn’t have eyes anymore either, meaning he’s blind.
Joe’s lack of a mouth represents (and contributes to) his inability to communicate with the outside world. Although he has seen the horrors of war firsthand, he can’t actually tell them to anyone else, and so he must suffer alone with his knowledge. The empty hole over Joe's face also represents how the army has stripped Joe of his unique identity, turning him into yet another casualty statistic.
Themes
Joe feels like he’s dreaming but knows he’s not. He feels like nothing but a slab of meat. He feels that if he stays alive, he’ll go crazy, but he’s not even able to kill himself. In his head, he calls out to his mother to wake him. He wants to scream or move but can’t do anything.
Women often play a comforting role in the book, and so when Joe isn’t thinking of Kareen, he thinks of his mother. Joe’s though that he’s nothing but a slab of meat contradicts with what his mother said earlier about his father’s corpse (where she argued that a person’s true self is more than just a physical body).
Themes
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