Joe's father, Bill Bonham, courted Joe's mother and raised a family with her in Colorado. 'As a caretaker, capable of great humanistic love, the regular day nurse stands apart from the terse medical establishment, represented by the Morse code man, yet is not capable of the perceptive sympathy of the new day nurse.' Bill Bonham (Joe's father) 'The novel mainly consists of his reminiscences of childhood and his current struggle to remain sane and finally to communicate.' Regular day nurse It is implied that he will live the rest of his natural life in his condition.Īs Joe drifts between reality and fantasy, he remembers his old life with his family and girlfriend, and reflects upon the myths and realities of war. However, he realizes that the military will not grant his wish, nor will they put him out of his misery by euthanizing him, as it is 'against regulations'. Joe eventually successfully communicates this with military officials after several months of banging his head on his pillow in Morse code. He then decides that he wants to be placed in a glass coffin and toured around the country in order to demonstrate to others the true horrors of war. Joe attempts suicide by suffocation, but finds that he has had a tracheotomy that he can neither remove nor control. He gradually realizes that he has lost his arms, legs, and all of his face (including his eyes, ears, nose, teeth, and tongue), but that his mind functions perfectly, leaving him a prisoner in his own body. Joe Bonham, a young American soldier serving in World War I, awakens in a hospital bed after being caught in the blast of an exploding artillery shell.

A 1971 film adaptation was written and directed by Trumbo. The novel won one of the early National Book Awards: the Most Original Book of 1939. Johnny Got His Gun is an anti-war novel written in 1938 by American novelist Dalton Trumbo and published in September 1939 by J.

Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo