Introduction

Johnny Got His Gun is a famous anti-war novel written in 1938 by American author Dalton Trumbo. The novel’s protagonist is Joe Bonham, an American soldier in World War I. Joe awakes to discover that he is in hospital, wounded by a shell. He gradually comes to realize that he has lost his arms and legs. Next, he grasps that he is also deaf, blind, and mute. At first distraught, Joe manages to preserve his sanity by learning to track time using the sensations in his skin. He also tries to communicate by tapping his head against his pillow to spell out messages in Morse code. When a nurse finally sees what he is doing, Joe thinks he is saved. However, his request—to be taken outside and shown to the public—is rejected by the authorities. Joe recognizes that their refusal stems from the fact that they do not want the public to see him because they are afraid his state will discourage others from fighting in the next war.

Johnny Got His Gun won a National Book Award in 1939 and was later adapted into a film in 1971, with direction and screenplay by Dalton Trumbo himself.

This guide uses the 2009 Penguin Classics edition of Johnny Got His Gun.

Content warning: The novel depicts severe war-related physical and psychological trauma, including suicide ideation and acts of violence.

Plot Summary

Johnny Got His Gun is divided into two books and twenty chapters. In Chapters 1-6, Joe Bonham, the novel’s protagonist, hears a phone ringing while working in a bakery in Los Angeles. When he takes the call, he learns that his father has died, and he returns to his family home. However, when he keeps hearing the phone ring, he realizes that this is really a memory he has been reliving. In fact, Joe—an American soldier in the First World War—is actually in hospital after being wounded by an exploding shell. Joe passes in and out of consciousness and realizes that he has no feeling in his arms because they been amputated. Feeling that his body is unbalanced he also grasps that his legs have also been amputated. When he tries to scream at this shock, he discovers that he cannot because he has no mouth or jaw. He gradually ascertains through the sensations in what is left of his face that his eyes have also been destroyed and that he is now blind.

In Chapters 6-10, a now more fully-conscious Joe takes stock of his injuries. He wonders how they did not kill him and notices a tension on his face which he realizes is from a mask that has been attached to him. He also senses a small, unhealed, wound on his side and believes that a rat is crawling onto him and eating his flesh from it. After being woken up by a nurse, Joe realizes that the rat was only a dream. However, he worries that this dream will recur. As such, Joe tries to think of ways to distinguish states of sleep and wake himself up from them. He settles on concentrating on active thought as a way of achieving this. Joe reflects on the war and the reasons for it. He argues that the stated ideals used to justify it—such as liberty, democracy and honor—are never clarified by the people in power or are merely subjective, and thus exist as empty rhetoric. More importantly, none of these values are worth giving up life for.

In Chapters 11-14, Joe focuses on the importance of keeping track of time so he can locate himself in a common world with others. At first, he tries to do this by counting the seconds, minutes, and hours between the nurses’ visits. He finds it is too easy to lose track with this method. Instead, he uses the remaining sensation in the skin on his neck, which can tell the difference between hot and cold. Joe is thus able, by assessing changes of temperature, to work out when sunrise is. From this newfound ability to track time Joe is able to construct his own sense of the passing months and seasons. Into his fourth year in hospital, Joe feels the vibrations of five people entering his room. They pin something heavy on his chest. Joe realizes that this is a medal and that the visitors are generals. However, from this encounter, he grasps that he can use vibrations to communicate by tapping his back against his bed as Morse code. Unfortunately, none of the nurses who visit him recognize what he is trying to do.

In Chapters 15-20, Joe discovers that he has a new day nurse from the different vibrations he feels when she approaches. She traces “Merry Christmas” onto his skin with her fingers. Hoping that she might be able to understand what he is doing, he carefully taps out “S.O.S”. The nurse notices that he is trying to tell her something and eventually grasps that Joe is tapping out Morse code. The nurse runs to get someone who understands this code. The person then asks Joe what he wants. Joe explains that he wants to be taken outside so that he can be amongst people instead of being trapped in the hospital. However, the man’s response is to say that this request is against regulations. Joe feels brutally betrayed and ends up drugged when he tries to tap out a plea for them to reconsider. The drug provokes in Joe a vision of himself as Christ with a message of a new war to come. At this point, Joe understands the reason they will not let him out: The authorities are planning a new war and do not want the sight of him to dissuade other people from fighting in it.