Johnny Got His Gun was published in 1939 by Hollywood screenwriter Dalton Trumbo. Approaching its 85th anniversary, it’s important to look back on the importance of this timeless classic.
The book follows American soldier Joe Bonham as he wakes up in a hospital. He soon realizes he is missing all of his limbs, part of his face, his hearing and vision. He drifts in and out of consciousness, replaying his memories and trying to find meaning within his new condition.
It’s a bleak story that doesn’t shy away from telling you how bad Joe’s reality is. However, it’s a reality that remains true for so many. Joe was partially based on Canadian soldier Curley Christian who lost his limbs due to an artillery shell.
Trumbo read about the experiences of soldiers like Curley Christian and, using his own experience during World War One, he was able to build a story that transcends the boundaries between reality and fiction. Trumbo wrote the story as both a criticism on the state of the American government and a letter of pacifism.
The Dead
As the reader, you never leave Joe’s perspective. It makes reading the book claustrophobic, but that’s by design. Trumbo wants you to feel Joe’s pain, his suffering, his longing.
The horror of the book doesn’t come from the war raging in the background, but the war within Joe. How do you live when you are better off dead? After realising that he has no control over whether he lives or dies, Joe starts to count the days. He measures it in visits from the nurse, his dressings getting changed and the feeling of sun on his skin. His reason for living is to simply just live.
The main theme of the book is life. If Joe can find a reason to live everyday then why can’t we? Trumbo was a proud pacifist, he believed in celebrating life over everything, and it’s something I couldn’t agree more with.
As the years go by Joe, continues to count. It has been years since Joe arrived in the hospital. He learns that he isn’t hopeless, he can still communicate. He begins to slam his head into his pillow, mimicking the dots and dashes of morse code. The nurses and doctors don’t understand, but Joe keeps going. He loses track of days, intently focused on the tapping.
He taps to no response for what seems like years, falling through memories of prior loves and why he joined the army in the first place. A nurse visits him one night and gently with her finger traces “MERRY CHRISTMAS” into his chest. This wipes away any time keeping Joe was attempting as he tries to communicate back to her. It’s a heart warming moment in a book so filled with sadness. You get to experience the joy of connection to another person with Joe.
Connection is another huge aspect to this book. Can we communicate with each other without a face, a tongue or body language? Joe craves connection, he wishes for his Mother and his lover but doesn’t want them to see him like this. He is ashamed of what he has been through. By talking even for a second to the nurse, it provides Joe a new lease on life.
Approaching the end of the book Joe is able to communicate to a doctor, asking to be let outside. The doctor denies his request and leaves him alone once again. Joe wants to feel what it’s like outside, he wants to be made an example.
One of the most powerful lines comes at the end of the book and read: “Remember this you people who plan war. Remember this you patriots you fierce ones you spawners of hate you inventors of slogans. Remember this as you have never remembered anything else in your lives. We are men of peace we are men who work and we want no quarrel.”
The Living
Trumbo wrote Johnny Got His Gun as a proud anti-war testament; a book to challenge what people believed at the time. However, through it’s anti-war messaging and pacifist preaching it has become more effective and has inspired a lot of other media.
In 1971, Dalton Trumbo adapted the book into a film. Sticking with the central themes of the book but changing certain aspects and scenes. It wasn’t as successful as the book but has got a large cult following.
The book was also put to stage a few times, most famously in the eighties.
One of the strangest lasting impacts the book has had was on the band Metallica. When recording their album …And Justice For All they made the song One inspired by Johnny Got His Gun. The lyrics are a play by play of Joe’s life after war and the music video even uses footage from the film.
Looking away from its impact on media, the book has been republished multiple times over its lifetime, most recently by Penguin. Every few decades the book comes back into circulation as war has kept the book in the public conscious.
There is very few books that have left as much of an impact as Johnny Got His Gun has on me. I haven’t been the same since I read it and writing this has been difficult. It’s not just a book, it’s a cry for peace, a fight for love not death.
It is something everyone should read at some point in their life.
Featured image credit: Mubi.com