Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #822410 in Books
• Published on: 1999-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: School & Library Binding
• 256 pages

Customer Reviews

An extremely powerful and disturbing story.
There are few books which I can honestly say have altered my outlook on life, whose covers I have closed a different person. "Johnny got his gun" is one of them, though I fear I lack the eloquence to persuade you to read it.

It tells the story of a World War One soldier, horrifically wounded in battle to the point where he is totally cut off from the outside world. With only his memories for company, he attempts to make sense of his situation, and make the most of his world, such as it is. After a long time (having no way to measure time at first, he can be no more precise than this), he eventually manages to communicate with the staff attending him in hospital, and then with his army commanders.

Trumbo's masterstroke is, to my mind, quite subtle: he hardly uses any punctuation at all, save for full stops. This relates very effectively the disordered stream of the soldier's thoughts, and at times, makes the prose all the more disturbing.

His protests to the outside world, first unheard and later ignored, are extremely powerful and moving, and make the book as a whole demand repeat readings.

Everyone should me made to read this book at sometime or another.

(In case you were wondering, the other life-altering books were "One flew over the cuckoo's nest", "Slaughterhouse five", "Farenheit 351" and "1984" - read them all.)

Why politicians never fight wars themselves
Next time you watch a "smart-bomb" create a puff of smoke on a green screen, or, you see the clouds of dust settling on a hill in Afghanistan or Iraq you might be forgiven for thinking that war really is now "clinical", "painless" and "humane".

This book illustrates what war looks like up-close and personal, from an author black-listed for "un-American" behaviour. Every time you see a bomb exploding you never see the real casualties. These are too graphic to appear on TV and therefore we are safely insulated from seeing what we are responsible for. But the pictures themselves show only half the truth.

This book lays bare the reality of suffering and the stark reality that war, for whatever reason, is not glorious. It is not honourable. It is not heroic.
It illustrates how the with the best intentions and through being caught up in patriotic or nationalistic ferver your life can be taken and never returned. All the while, those who choose to start war never, ever have to put their lives on the line.

Umissable
I first heard about this book 10 years ago when I found out the Metallica song "One" was based on it, so i rushed out to my local library and managed to borrow a rather dog-eared copy.

This book scared the life out of me and reading it again 10 years later it still does.

Having said that though you HAVE to read it and put yourself in Johhny's position, it is impossible to imagine what he was going through laying there day after day.

Now if only the movie could be re-released in the UK.