42 pages • 1 hour read
Dalton TrumboJohnny Got His Gun
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1939A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Joe Bonham
Joe Bonham is the protagonist of Johnny Got His Gun, with the novel’s perspective centered on his point of view. Joe is a young man from humble origins. He recalls his father working hard to grow food and feed the family, and also describes his own experiences “walking all night long and working hard and getting eighteen dollars at the end of the week for [his] trouble” (67). Before the war, Joe performed a series of manual “blue-collar” jobs, such as working in an industrial bakery and doing maintenance work on a desert railway in the heat. Joe’s modest socio-economic background designates him as one of the “little guys,” who he sees as being at the bottom of social and political hierarchies—the “little guys” are ordinary, everyday people who are often exploited in times of war.
Joe’s experience in the First World War has led to catastrophic physical injuries. All of the novel’s present-day action takes place in Joe’s hospital bed, where he is now deaf, blind, and mute. His body has undergone multiple amputations, depriving him of his limbs. At first, Joe’s discovery of the extent of his injuries is so horrifying for him that he attempts suicide. However, he gradually starts to adapt to his condition by seeking ways of bringing order to his day and in trying to communicate with the outside world. His use of hot/cold sensations on his skin to differentiate day from night, as well as his careful observations of how his nurses walk and touch him, enable him to establish a sense of routine and to tell people apart from one another. His attempts at communicating give him a sense of momentum and bring purpose to his days.
Over the course of the novel, Joe reflects on his wartime experiences and begins to question why and how wars are fought in the first place. His interrogation of the ideals of “liberty” and “democracy” lead him to conclude that these abstractions are not worth dying for—rather, he praises the simple, everyday things that people in peaceful circumstances can do, such as “the liberty to walk and see and hear and talk and eat and sleep with [his] girl” (115). Joe’s defense of the simple joys of living suggests that what he always wanted was to live his life in peace instead of fighting in any war in the first place.
At the novel’s end, Joe makes his anti-war feelings explicitly known to the outside world at last. Through communicating in Morse code, he begs to be taken outside on a public tour, to warn others of what the results of war really are. The denial of this request condemns Joe to a life inside the hospital, with Joe’s final reverie of being a new Christ warning of a new war confirming his status as a sacrificial victim due to the wrongdoings of other, more powerful people.
Joe’s Father
Joe's father is portrayed as a simple, honest, and hardworking man of modest means. He owned two small plots of land and was a talented gardener, but he never succeeded in becoming wealthy or socially distinguished.
Joe’s father plays an important role in many of Joe’s flashbacks and dreams while in hospital. The novel opens with Joe dreaming about a call informing him of his father’s death, in which a phone rings and rings but he is unable to answer it. The recollection of his father’s literal death mirrors Joe’s figurative death at the novel’s opening, when his catastrophic war injuries have rendered him utterly isolated and dependent upon others. Joe also dreams about standing over his father’s body and saying, “it’s just as good you’re dead [. . .] people’ve got to be quicker and harder these days than you were dad” (7). Thus, Joe’s father is initially portrayed as essentially well-meaning but out of place in the ruthless modern world, with his death simultaneously marking the death of an apparently slower and simpler pre-war way of life. His father’s unworldliness is emphasized even more when Joe later remembers their last camping trip together in the woods near Shale City. As Joe recalls, paraphrasing his mother and others, “his father was a failure. His father couldn’t make any money” (109). In early twentieth-century America where people were increasingly judged on economic success, Joe’s father had fallen short—he was neither lucky nor savvy enough to become rich.
However, Joe’s judgement of his father and of the values he represents changes as the novel progresses. As Joe eventually recognizes, “he was a good man and an honest man. He kept his children together and they ate good fine food rich food better food than people ate in the cities” (110). Joe wonders why, given that his father was able to provide so much through his creativity and skill in gardening, that his father could nevertheless be considered by others to have “failed.”
Joe’s memory about the fishing rod stresses the worth of his father’s values even further. Joe loses his father’s fishing rod, which is his father’s prized possession and one that is irreplaceable for him. His father cannot afford to buy another rod like it, which makes the loss all the greater. Rather than being angry with Joe, his father dismisses the loss of the rod as trivial and focuses instead on spending the remaining time with his son. Joe’s father’s reaction reveals his prioritization of what he believes is more meaningful than material possessions or wealth: human relationships. Joe’s changing view of his father suggests that it is the broader social world of America, and not his father, which has its values the wrong way around: it is American society, both through its materialism and its costly and cruel Great War, that has failed.
The Nurses
The nurses represent both Joe’s main connection to the outside world and the medical establishment Joe is trapped within. Due to Joe’s condition, he has almost no human contact or relationships with anyone besides the nurses who attend to him, yet his feelings towards them are sometimes conflicted.
In one respect, the nurses are a reminder of Joe’s injuries and of the severe limitations he now faces, which in turn reminds him of his perpetual entrapment within the hospital. When he is regaining a sense of where he is and has the dream about the rat, he curses the nurses’ apparent neglect and imagines his revenge: “he found himself coming upon a nurse and grabbing her by the throat [. . .] and hollering at her ‘why don’t you come and chase the rats off your customers?’” (96). Joe’s anger reveals his sense of helplessness and his resentment at being so dependent upon others for his basic care. However, when the nurse returns a few moments later, his attitude has totally changed: “the nurse’s hands were on him. He could feel her washing his body and manipulating his flesh [. . .] She was somebody and she was his friend” (97, emphasis added). Joe’s categorization of the nurse as a “friend” suddenly transforms the nurse into a figure of kindness and companionship, providing him with the only meaningful human contact he can experience. As Joe gradually begins to reassert control over his condition throughout the novel, his ability to differentiate between the nurses and imagine their ages and appearances is evidence of his reawakening as a human being. Thus, the two conflicting attitudes are born of Joe’s emotional and mental ambivalence towards his situation: he both needs the nurses to maintain a connection with others and prevent total isolation, yet he also occasionally resents the fact that he has to rely on them to experience that connection.
The most important nurse in Joe’s life is the one who appears towards the end of the novel. The new nurse is distinguished by her empathy and special care for Joe’s well-being. She is the first person from the outside world who makes a meaningful effort to communicate directly with Joe, tracing a “Merry Christmas” message upon his chest. When Joe responds by tapping out his Morse code, she recognizes his attempts at communication for what they really are, and immediately seeks out someone who can interpret what Joe is saying. The moment of successful communication is a breakthrough for Joe, who can finally have a conversation with another human being. Unfortunately, the denial of his request to go outside on a public tour reminds Joe that he is ultimately at the mercy of the military and medical establishments that wish to keep him hidden, and that even the friendliest of nurses can do nothing to save him from that predicament.
