"Johnny Got His Gun"

[zabet]

by Dalton Trumbo



Written in 1938 and published in 1939.

As relevent today as it was then.

This book is one of the few that have haunted me. Perhaps from reading
it at such a young age, 12, is to blame. I do not really think so. If
you have read it, you know what I mean. For the longest time, ringing of
an old rotary phone made me think of this book.

http://www.thebookbag.co.uk/trumbojohn.htm

Joe wishes the phone would stop ringing. It goes on and on. That must have been some awful wine he drank last night (or was it cognac? or was it absinthe?) because his head hurts so much it could burst. Who could let a phone ring on and on like that? Perhaps it's not a hangover, perhaps he's sick. Even hangover headaches aren't this bad. And someone really should answer that phone.

Struggling through the fog of the pain in his head, Joe goes to answer it. And suddenly he knows why it's ringing. It's ringing to tell him that his father has died. Head pounding, Joe takes the call and receives the news from his mother. He's done that before. Head still pounding Joe realises he's dreaming. Yes, he's sick, it's not a hangover. Fading in and out, feeling by turns afraid and peaceful, dreams sometimes serene, sometimes frightening, it is a while before Joe realises how badly hurt he is. He's covered in bandages from head to toe, and he's deaf, he can't hear anything at all that is real. But despite his deafness that phone just keeps on ringing. And yet it is worse even than that. Joe is so horrifically injured that he can't move, will never move again. Worse even still, he has lost four of his five senses; the only one remaining to him is the sense of touch and that merely passive.

------

I found Johnny Got His Gun horrific. I found it sad. I found it frightening. War is horrific. War is sad. War is frightening. It also made me think. It is important when presented with a choice, especially with a choice between supporting the making of war or the making of peace, that we are aware of the full implication of that choice and the effect that it has not only on world politics but on individual people. I think you should read Johnny Got His Gun for that reason. It will make you think too. You may be a pacifist yourself, you may not. It may change your mind, it may not. But you'll be aware of another, more personal, implication of the choice you are making and that is an important thing. It is hard to read, it hurts to read it. But isn't that as it should be? War is hard. War hurts. Dalton Trumbo himself found his book gave different answers to his questions in each of three conflicts, in both world wars and in Vietnam. He is right to ask us to stop and question the choices we are making today until we are sure they are the right ones.

-----

A worthy read.

edit to add this link of excerpt of the book:http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/General/JohnnyGotHisGun.html

[Rick Myers]

1. That was an AMAZING book then, and even more important now!!!

You're right, one of the few books that can haunt you!

[zabet]

2. It surely changed my perception of war. n/t

[MoonRiver]

3. I think I was 21 when I read that book.

It was horrific, stunning, and incredibly enlightening about the true nature of war.

[zabet]

4. With the injuries from IEDs

coming home from Iraq, this book hits home with its depiction.

[MoonRiver]

10. I shudder just thinking about what those poor kids have endured in this evil war.

:cry:

[zabet]

14. I know...

I really think the images of the injured sadden me more
than the images of the flag draped coffins. Both break
my heart but, the living continue to suffer. :cry:

[Tom Joad]

5. the strongest part is at the end... a warning to those who plan wars

wayyy back, a young tv actor Mike Farrell (pre-MASH days) read this excerpt at a vietnam antiwar rally. It was broadcast on a local l.a. pbs station that i happened to catch. So i picked up a copy of the book. books change lives.

The novel “johnny got his gun” is the story of a young man, who like many others, goes to war because he is told by the leaders of his country to go to war. He is injured in that war as a bomb explodes next to him. He has lost both his legs. Both his arms. His hearing is lost, his eyes cannot see, his mouth cannot speak. He has no face. But, strangely he lives, if it can be called that, in a military hospital. The nurses pump the food into a hole in his stomach, they clean him, and he exists in his own world for years with no real communication with anyone. He then comes to realize he can communicate by Morse Code. By moving the stump of what is left of his body he can communicate to the world in dots and dashes. And finally there were people who understood what he was doing. A message is tapped on his stomach; he is asked “what do you want?” After reflecting on how he can have a meaningful life outside the virtual prison of this hospital, he comes to realize he has a special mission.

And then suddenly he saw. He had a vision of himself as a new kind of Christ as a man who carries within himself all the seeds of a new order of things. He was the new messiah of the battlefields saying to people as I am so shall you be. For he had seen the future he had tasted it and now he was living it. He had seen the airplanes flying in the sky he had seen the skies of the future filled with them black with them and now he saw the horror beneath. He saw a world of lovers forever parted of dreams never consummated of plans that never turned into reality. He saw a world of dead fathers and crippled brothers and crazy screaming sons. He saw a world of armless mothers clasping headless babies to their breasts trying to scream out their grief from throats that were cancerous with gas. He saw starved cities black and cold and motionless and the only things in this whole dead terrible world that made a move or a sound were the airplanes that blackened the sky and far off against the horizon the thunder of the big guns and the puffs that rose from barren tortured earth when their shells exploded.

That was it he had it he understood it now he had told them his secret and in denying him they had told him theirs.

He was the future he was a a perfect picture of the future and they were afraid to let anyone see what the future was like. Already they were looking ahead they were figuring the future and somewhere in the future they saw war. To fight that war they would need men and if men saw the future they wouldn't fight. So they were masking the future they were keeping the future a soft quiet deadly secret. They knew if all the people all the little guys saw the future they would begin to ask questions. They would ask questions and they would find answers and they would say to the guys who wanted them to fight they would say you lying thieving sons-of-bitches we won't fight we won't be dead we will live we are the world we are the future and we will not let you butcher us no matter what you say no matter what slogans you write. Remember it well we we we are the world we are what makes go round we make the bread and cloth and guns we are the hub of the wheel and the spokes and the wheel itself without us you would be hungry naked worms and we will not die. We are the immortal we are the sources of life we are the lowly despicable ugly people we are the great wonderful beautiful people of the world and we are sick of it we are utterly weary we are done with it forever and ever because we are the living and we will not be destroyed.

If you make a war if there are guns to be aimed if there are bullets to be fired if there are men to be killed they will not be us. They will not be us the guys who grow wheat and turn it into food the guys who make clothes and paper and houses and tiles the guys who build dams and power plants and string the long moaning high tension wires the guys who crack crude oil down into a dozen different parts who make light globes and sewing machines and shovels and automobiles and airplanes and tanks and guns oh no it will not be us who die. It will be you.

It will be you-you who urge us on to battle you who incite us against ourselves you who would have one cobbler kill another cobbler you who would have one man who works kill another man who works you who would have one human being who wants only to live kill another human being who wants only to live. Remember this. Remember this well you people who plan for 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. But if you destroy our peace if you take away our work if you try to range us one against the other we will know what to do. If you tell us to make the world safe for democracy we will take you seriously and by god and by Christ we will make it so. We will use the guns you force upon us we will use them to defend our very lives and the menace to our lives does not lie on the other side of a nomansland that was set apart without our consent it lies within our own boundaries here and now we have seen it and we know it.

Put the guns into our hands and we will use them. Give us the slogans and we will turn them into realities. Sing the battle hymns and we will take them up where you left off. Not one not ten not ten thousand not a million not ten millions not a hundred millions but a billion two billions of us all the people of the world we will have the slogans and we will have the hymns and we will have the guns and we will use them and we will live. Make no mistake of it we will live. We will be alive and we will walk and talk and eat and sing and laugh and feel and love and bear our children in tranquility in security in decency in peace. You plan the wars you masters of men plan the wars and point the way and we will point the gun.

On the weekend of February 15th, 2003 tens of millions of people all over the world gathered in hundreds of places to protest the pending war in Iraq. It was the largest global protest in human history. When it gets to be a billion of us on the street, there will be no need to point any gun.

[zabet]

7. Thank you!

Truer words today more than ever.

Thanks for your Excellent addition to the OP!!
:applause: :hi:

[kestrel91316]

6. I read this in high school and it left me with a permanent distaste for

those who beat the drums and make the wars.

[zabet]

8. I do not see how anyone could read this book and

not develope the same distastes.

[kestrel91316]

15. I think we can safely assume HRH Caligula has not read it.

[conscious evolution]

9. A must read for everyone. K & R

[zabet]

13. Especially with the number of wounded veterans we are making.

Thanks for the K and R. :hi:

[Journeyman]

11. I named my son after Dalton Trumbo. . .

his personal life, his struggles, and his ultimate triumph are an admirable example to everyone of the power of belief -- belief in your self, belief in your ideals, belief in the power and righteousness that is the U.S. Constitution. It's why I use him for my avatar.

HUAC robbed us of so much, especially the creative output of so many worthy men. Had Trumbo not been forced to leave the country and pen screenplays using Fronts, he might have finished what was truly his masterpiece, Night of the Aurochs. As it is, we have the fragments Robert Kirsch pulled together in the years after Dalton's death and from them we can envision what a taut, well-structured tale it would have been. For those unfamiliar with this work, unlike Johnny, which told of war through the experiences of a victim, Aurochs tells of war through the evil eyes of the perpetrator, in this case that of a Nazi named Grieben, whose destiny it was to become a commandant at Auschwitz.

"The thing I am after here, wrote Trumbo, the devil I am trying to catch, is that dark yearning for power that lurks in all of us, the perversion of love that is the inevitable consequence of power, the exquisite pleasures of perversion when power become absolute."

Taken together, Johnny and Aurochs would have crafted a magnificence view of war's dual nature -- the intensity of the passions it stirs, the depths of despair it inspires. But Trumbo was robbed of his prime earning years, and his decision -- late in life -- to bring Johnny to the screen, kept him too long from Auroch's task.

Yet another reason to assiduously defend the First Amendment, for its denial was the root cause of Trumbo's and the other Nine's woes.

For those interested, Additional Dialogue, a collection of Dalton Trumbo's letters written during his years of exile and struggle, provide a fascinating glimpse into the mind of this extraordinarily talented writer and passionate adherent to American ideals.

[zabet]

12. His life story is amazing.

An inspiration to all. He suffered the witch hunts of McCarthyism.

Thanks for the added info!!
:yourock: :hi:

[onethatcares]

16. I did not know that, I was totally unaware that he was

attacked by McCarthy and his HUAC. I read "Johnny got his gun" in highschool many years ago, it has stayed with me since.

[Journeyman]

26. Senator Joseph McCarthy had nothing to do with HUAC. . .

which was the House Un-American Activities Committee. Nor did McCarthy have anything to do with the persecution and incarceration of the Hollywood Ten, as they appeared before Congress in 1947 while McCarthy didn't begin his attacks until early 1950. By then, most of the Ten had served their terms in prison (joined, ironically enough, late in their term by their HUAC persecutor, Committee Chair J. Parnell Thomas*, who was convicted of fraud, forced to resign from Congress, and sentenced to prison in 1950), and, in Dalton Trumbo's case, moved out of the US.


*Thomas ended up in Danbury Prison, the same prison as two of the Ten, Lester Cole and Ring Lardner, Jr. It was Lardner who first ran into Thomas, meeting him in the prison farm, where Thomas was cleaning a chicken coop. Lardner made a mocking comment about Thomas' fraud conviction and, when Thomas sneared at him, "I see you're still spouting Communist drivel," Lardner laughed and replied, "And I see you're still shoveling chickenshit."

[Lisa]

17. strange to think that the actor who portrayed Joe in the movie

(Timothy Bottoms) later played George W. Bush on TV (and in another film).

[AnotherGreenWorld]

19. How was the movie?

I've haven't seen it, but the book was great.

[133724]

20. The movie was very good...

Although I haven't seen it in 40 years or so,,,

[Lisa]

25. pretty good -- Donald Sutherland also appeared in it

I don't know if it's been released on DVD yet, though.

[ReadTomPaine]

18. Kick

[w8liftinglady]

21. we were talking about this book last night...

My dad sent my son "Red Badge of Courage" for his birthday
..which led to our discussion of anti-war novels.
I love how my Republican dad is as anti-war as I am.

[zabet]

23. Same with my Dad...

He calls himself a 'common sense Republican' but,
goes to add that that type is less than 1 percent
of the Republican party. I tell him he is just
a closet Dem and he needs to admit it. :rofl:

[Jamastiene]

22. The song, "One," by Metallica is based on the movie version.

The video for the song shows clips from the movie too. It is a horrific story, but it does make you think about war a lot. There is a part where a military CO was standing with a chaplain and he told the chaplain to help Joe. The chaplain said, "He's a product of your profession, not mine." It was chilling.

[OneBlueSky]

24. best anti-war book ever written . . . film was pretty good, too . . .

if I recall correctly, Dalton Trumbo was one of those blackballed during the McCarthy era, and the only work he could get was under a pseudonym . . .

[Puregonzo1188]

27. I read it when I was a freshman in high school, absolutely amazing book once you get into it. (n/t)

[bbgrunt]

28. thank you for this discussion. I'm roo late for a rec, but it here's a kick.