Johnny Got His Gun Literary Elements

Anti-war novel

It is hard to determine where the action takes place because most of the things described are memories. The main character remains in a hospital room in an unnamed town but the events that he remembers take place in Los Angeles, his hometown and on the battlefield. The action is centered around the time when the First World War and it extends beyond it, covering the period Joe spent in a hospital bed after he was wounded. Because he had no way of communicating with the outside world, it is hard to determine how much time Joe spent in the hospital.

The narrator is the main character, Joe, and he presents the events from a subjective point of view.

Tragic, sad, desperate, ironic, calm.

The protagonist of the story is Joe but there is no character that can be considered as being the antagonist. Instead, the war and the people sending the soldiers to war can be considered as being the antagonists.

The major conflict is an internal one and it is linked with Joe’s feelings. Joe often feels torn between the desire to die and have everything over and the need to warn others about the dangers of war and about the deceptive methods used by the recruiters.

The story reaches its climax when Joe is able to communicate with his nurse and the man she brought with her for the first time.

In the first chapter, Joe remembers his father’s death and the day when he found out about it. The event foreshadowed the hardships Joe will go through in his life and also the tragic events that will be recalled later in the novel.

Not found.

Joe is isolated because he is no longer able to see, hear or move. The idea that he is isolated is alluded in the novel many times by describing certain situations when Joe felt alone. One of these instances is when Joe returns to his hometown after working in the desert only to find out that his former girlfriend was in a relationship with his best friend. This is one of the instances when Joe feels alone and abandoned by those close to him. The idea of distance and isolation is also portrayed in the first chapter when Joe remembers the way his parents used to communicate before they got married. They used to talk on public phone that were at a great distance from one another and this only accentuated further the idea of isolation and distance.

An image that is important in the novel is that of Karren’s father, Mike. Mike was a former coal miner and his body became deformed after many years of hard work. Joe describes Mike in the beginning of the novel and the description of Mike’s physical appearance is important because it can be linked with the common working class in America. More than often, those people were forced to work for extended periods of time just to make enough to be able to provide housing and food for their families. These people were often forced by the circumstances to accept doing dangerous jobs that put their life in danger. In many ways, the young men who accepted to go to war were just like Mike; people forced by unfavorable circumstance or by the fear of being seen as cowards to join the army and serve in a country far away from home while also putting their life and well-being in danger.

Joe’s relationship with his caretakers is somehow paradoxical in the idea that Joe sees them as the only link he has with the outside world and also his jailers. Joe awaits the arrival of his nurses because their presence is the only way through which Joe can measure time. But their arrival also reminds Joe that he is not seen as human, but rather as an animal unable to manifest human traits.

A parallel can be drawn between Mike and the men mentioned in the fourth chapter who agreed to go to war just to escape prison. Both men had no other choice but to do what they disliked because they were forced by the circumstances. For Mike, the alternative to working in a coal mine was living in poverty for the rest of his life and for the prisoner was to either risk his life on the front with the possibility of returning home if he survived or spending the rest of his life in prison. In both cases, the characters have no other choice but to choose the hard path.

In the novel, the distinction between ‘’us’’ and ‘’them’’ appears often and in this case, the two terms are used to describe two large groups of people. The ‘’us’’ stands for the soldiers sent to war and who had to suffer directly because of it. Joe identifies himself as being a member in the ‘’us’’ group, a former farmer and peaceful man who yet agreed to go and kill other people. ‘’They’’ stands for another group of people, namely those profiting from the war and who never saw the battlefield or the damages caused by the war. In Joe’s mind, there will always be a conflict between ‘’us’’ and ‘’them’’.

There are plenty of laws to protect guys’ money even in war time but there’s nothing on the books says a man’s life’s his own.