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Johnny Got His Gun By Dalton Trumbo Lessons

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The Enlightening “They died with only one thought in their minds and that was I want to live I want to live I want to live.” In the 1939 book “Johnny Got His Gun” by Dalton Trumbo, the main character Joe Bonham was drafted into World War 1. During the war Joe’s trench, along with almost everything inside, was terminated. Joe suffered the tragic loss of both legs, arms and all five of his senses from the shell. Joe understands first hand that in the moment of death the single thought racing through his broken and destroyed body is “I want to live”. Throughout this award winning book, Trumbo through Joe teaches many lessons. Lessons can be taught about simple tasks o heartbreaking realities, and unfortunately Joe’s “lessons well learned” are …show more content…

Joe, devastated by his paralyzing injuries, has come to the conclusion that mankind is cruel. Mankind has caused him to fall into this coffin where he has it worse off than the slaves and prisoners; “He thought of them and he thought they were luckier than I am they could move they could see each other they were more nearly living than I and the were not imprisoned as securely” (page 182). Joe talks extensively about the treatment of slaves, prisoners, Jesus, and any man that is brings guilt to the reader's mind. Joe finds a reason in each story that he is worse off than they; whether it be they can die or as simple as they can hear. Joe finds them to be luckier than he is because all of the individuals he names can see, hear, walk and die; Joe has no choice except to sit and rot. Not only does Joe show the cruelty through the stories of brutal and inhumane treatment of people in the past but he also shows the cruelty in his own treatment after he breaks through the silent barrier of communication. Joe has just broken the barrier with his tapping of morse code, the nurse and the individual who knows morse code understand what he is trying to do. The unknown individual and Joe have a very simple conversation which ends with the crushing of all Joe’s hopes for a real life, “What you ask is against regulations who are you” (page 235). Joe at this point has given

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896 Words | 4 Pages

All things considered, in life, unfortunate circumstances can turn into fruitful rewards. In Joe’s case, doing the right thing and saving a life turned into a beneficial outcome. From this essay, you’ve learned that Joe’s actions of saving a woman, acting heroically, and humbly turning down a generous reward caused the plot to move forward. That without the author using myth-like elements in the text, the storyline would never progress. Ultimately, in Joe looking out for someone else’s interests, he led himself into living a life with better resources and a

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317 Words | 2 Pages

In the movie, “Johnny Got His Gun,” Johnny's flashbacks are from a combination of ether and the battle Johnny made it through. His head is very messed up and injuries are very bad. Because of these nightmares, they bring him flashbacks. It is on account that his injuries are so bad that remembering home and his girl are his ways of coping. His first flashback is of having conversations with his girl.

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844 Words | 4 Pages

This chapter “The Ghost Soldiers”, showed us how Tim O’Brien and the other soldiers were dealing with the war both physically and psychologically. It also shows us how the Tim O'Brien behaved and felt when he was shot, wounded and had a bacteria infection on his butt and how the war changed the way he thought, and viewed the other soldiers around him. This chapter also contain a lot of psychological lens. From the way Tim O’Brien felt when he was shot and separated from his unit to a new unit to when he wanted revenge on Bobby Jorgenson for almost “killing” him.

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1540 Words | 7 Pages

Just like Coalhouse Walker Jr., Joe is a man of his word. If he says he is going to do something, he is going to do it. He told his mother that he was going to kill whoever raped her, and he did just that. Everyone has a strong relationship with someone, and Joe’s just so happen to be with his mother. If you truly love and care about someone, you sometimes have to take risks to show that you really care.

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560 Words | 3 Pages

While fighting in combat, soldiers often developed a fatalist attitude towards their lives allowing them to accept their death as fate; this attitude led to a sense of detachment that was tough to kick even when they returned to safer environments. A quarter of soldiers were diagnosed with neuro-psychiatric

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1245 Words | 5 Pages

In the year 1914, a war started that would turn innocent people against each other, and have aftermaths that include thousands of people dead due to new equipment like tanks, gas attacks, and hand-to-hand combat. In this war there was a soldier named Paul Bäumer who is a German nineteen year old who has made friends that will last a lifetime during this experience, but has also felt immense pain. His daily routine is to sleep, eat, and fight in the trenches, and he experiences death every day. Most soldiers view death as a recurring event, but Paul views it as wretchedness, which makes him different from others by caring about his comrades more than others. Paul shows many qualities through this experience of being a soldier in the First World War, and he learns what is necessary in life, which takes some people years to figure out.

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467 Words | 2 Pages

however, Joe is also the cruelest and most despicable of the three husbands. The author uses Joe’s ambition to Justify his actions and in doing so shows the consequences of them such as His relationship wife deteriorating, the townspeople resenting him, and his public shaming, and cursing of his wife on his

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761 Words | 4 Pages

War and its affinities have various emotional effects on different individuals, whether facing adversity within the war or when experiencing the psychological aftermath. Some people cave under the pressure when put in a situation where there is minimal hope or optimism. Two characters that experience

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757 Words | 4 Pages

Challenges at War Robert E. Lee once said, “What a cruel thing war is… to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors”. The novel The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien takes place in Vietnam. He and a handful of other men experience things only one can image and hope they will never have to experience again. They learn how death among them can greatly affect them, and many others. War is not an easy task to get through and these men all had different coping methods.

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1657 Words | 7 Pages

Although he is set to be released in less than two years, he does not obtain the help he needs while in prison, where he has resided for almost three decades. It is a devastating story because most people do not understand the help he needs. It's the people who would surprise you the most that do. One of Joe’s Inmates noticed Joe’s severe mental disability, “An inmate incarcerated with Joe writes to EJI about Joe's abuse and his disability" (“Joe Sullivan Character Analysis” N.P.). This inmate realized that Joe does not deserve to be in prison, but instead needs help getting out so that he can receive the help that he needs.

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In November of 1955, the United States entered arguably one of the most horrific and violent wars in history. The Vietnam War is documented as having claimed about 58,000 American lives and more than 3 million Vietnamese lives. Soldiers and innocent civilians alike were brutally slain and tortured. The atrocities of such a war are near incomprehensible to those who didn’t experience it firsthand. For this reason, Tim O’Brien, Vietnam War veteran, tries to bring to light the true horrors of war in his fiction novel The Things They Carried.

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Hidden somewhere within the blurred lines of fiction and reality, lies a great war story trapped in the mind of a veteran. On a day to day basis, most are not willing to murder someone, but in the Vietnam War, America’s youth population was forced to after being pulled in by the draft. Author Tim O’Brien expertly blends the lines between fiction, reality, and their effects on psychological viewpoints in the series of short stories embedded within his novel, The Things They Carried. He forces the reader to rethink the purpose of storytelling and breaks down not only what it means to be human, but how mortality and experience influence the way we see our world. In general, he attempts to question why we choose to tell the stories in the way

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999 Words | 4 Pages

The True Weight of War “The Things They Carried,” by Tim O’Brien, brings to light the psychological impact of what soldiers go through during times of war. We learn that the effects of traumatic events weigh heavier on the minds of men than all of the provisions and equipment they shouldered. Wartime truly tests the human body and and mind, to the point where some men return home completely destroyed. Some soldiers have been driven to the point of mentally altering reality in order to survive day to day. An indefinite number of men became numb to the deaths of their comrades, and yet secretly desired to die and bring a conclusion to their misery.

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728 Words | 3 Pages

In the passage from the novel Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo, Trumbo tells the story of a young boy named Joe and his father, who have a very close relationship. They each love to do the same things, but Joe thinks it is time to experience life on his own. Trumbo uses techniques such as Joe’s point of view, imagery, and unquoted dialogue to illustrate the strong relationship between Joe and his father. First, Trumbo uses third person limited point of view to only share the main character’s thoughts throughout the story.

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587 Words | 3 Pages

Johnny Got His Gun Dalton Trumbo’s novel, “Johnny Got His Gun” tells all about a father and son relationship that many people may envy for. Trumbo characterizes their relationship with a respectful tone, yet Trumbo also makes the love and trust the father and son share very apparent throughout the novel. Trumbo is able utilize literary devices such as third person point of view and a lack of formal punctuation, using syntax to help the reader have a better perspective on the relationship the father and son partake in.

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