Wartime Theme of Patriotism

Wartime Theme of Patriotism

War in the modern age shapes society not only through the cultural resonances, but also in terms of personal and political mutation. Johnny Got His Gun, written by Dalton Trumbo, is an antiwar novel. The sentiment of brutality of war protests the organization of modern warfare by Joe is examined the novel. War was elegantly packaged by words like “patriotism”, “liberty”, and “democratic” from the upper classes, which can mean very different thing to the young like Joe. For the young like Joe, they would wonder if the fight for patriotism is really just a fight to foist America’s sense of patriotism and honor on the rest of the world. Regardless of any high-sounding reasons to explain the war, it can not be denied that it leads the streams of blood, murder, and the consequence of tragedy. It is wrong to use patriotism as a motivation to go to war; modern warfare creates unprecedented dilemmas and specimens of injury and decay.

Joe Bonham is the protagonist and narrator of the novel, is meant to be representative of an everyday, young American man. Joe’s body stands as the center of the novel, symbolic of the inhumanity of modern warfare. He slowly realized that he has lost his arm, legs, eyes, ears, teeth and tongue. However, his mind functions were perfect and leaving him a prisoner in his own body:

He couldn't live like this because he would go crazy. But he couldn't die because he couldn't kill himself. If he could only breathe he could die. That was funny but it was true. He could hold his breath and kill himself. That was the only way left. Except that he wasn't breathing. His lungs were pumping air, but he couldn't stop them from doing it. He couldn't live and he couldn't die. (Trumbo 64)

The body would stand for the concrete, brutal realities of war and it would counteract the attractiveness of abstract ideals such as “democracy”, “patriotism” or “liberty”. Joe firmly believed that the “masters of men” did this to him. They were the men who plan these wars and send young soldiers like Joe to fight for “democracy” and “patriotism”. He also blamed and justifiably angry at these men because he just wanted to be an ordinary people than fight for war. These men are warmongers who stand to profit from war, feeds themselves off the decay and injury of wounded or dead soldiers. In Joe’s eyes, they were the cheater of patriotism, the maker of the war, the gainer of the decay. Joe was a helpless war victim that the rest of his life is destroyed due to war casualties.

The novel shows audiences the aftermath of war through the eyes of one wounded soldier. War is not the honor and democracy what governments have said, war in its self is a tragedy. “The title is a play on the phrase ‘Johnny get your gun’, a rallying call that was commonly used to encourage young American men