Johnny Got His Gun Themes

Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun is about Joe, a soldier who goes to fight in a war that he barely understands and ends up facing a fate that at times seems worse than death: he loses his arms, his legs, and much of his face, including his sense of hearing, smell, and sight. The novel takes place during World War I, the largest global war in history up until that point, when…

While Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun is a grim novel about the horrors of war, it also celebrates the value of life, particularly in Book II, which is called “The Living.” While the protagonist Joe is despondent and perhaps even suicidal in the first part of the book, as the novel progresses, he takes tentative steps to try to make the most of his new life without arms, legs, or a face. During…

When Joe loses his hearing and sight when an artillery shell explodes, he also loses all concept of time, and so he struggles to distinguish between past and present, often slipping back into memories from his old life in a series of memories and hallucinations. Although Joe’s father is dead before the novel even begins, he nevertheless plays a major role in the story through Joe’s memories of his childhood back in Shale City, Colorado…