Nausea

Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo

Nausea

There were times reading this book that I felt physically ill. There was more than one occasion where I had to put the book down and breathe shallowly so as not to vomit. Probably the worst was when Johnny finally figured out how to communicate and tell the doctors what he wanted, only to be told that it was against regulations. After all the struggle and anguish of becoming human again, which was very real to me as a reader, it was mind-blowing how easily Johnny's humanity was stripped away.

And that I think is the point of the book - war strips away humanity. War can make soldiers inhuman, but the more importantly war can affect the humanity of those whose job it is to be humane, i.e. doctors, nurses, etc. And if war can change doctors for the worse, imagine what it can do to everyone else. It's not as if the doctor or Johnny's first nurse, the one who cradled him against her breast without realizing his attempt to communicate, were actively malevolent. No, they thought they were doing good. But that's because war is a tricky thing. It convinces you that you are working for the common good when you are doing the opposite. The US military does this all the time with soldiers. When you join you have to be broken down and the built back up. At least the military is honest about it. But what about the family who lives in the suburbs. How does war affect them? What happens when they are broken down? When they forget about the weapons of mass destruction? When they start to believe that America needs to make the world safe for democracy through war? What happens to the people who think like this? What happens to you and me?

One other thing about the book affected me. Many of Johnny's memories were sad. But for Johnny they stopped being sad and became sacred. His everyday life became sacred. It became sacred in retrospect. Compared to war, a broken heart was something to be cherished. Compared to mutilation, growing apart from your father was a step to manhood. Compared to having your face blown off, arguments with your best friend became the spice of life. Trumbo definitely forces you to think more deliberately and to live more deliberately. For me, that made this book one of the best I've ever read.