Johnny Got His Gun

This passage, from Chapter x, indicates Joe's extreme skepticism about abstract language and the intent of those who use it for persuasion. From Joe's point of view, the farther removed words are from the things they describe, the more room there is to for the meaning of the words to shift to accommodate the desires of whoever is using them. Joe's point is that liberty can mean one thing to one person and another, very different thing to another person, therefore making the end value of the word nothing. If the word cannot be trusted to mean something—if liberty cannot be truly promised—then it is not remotely worth risking one's life for.

This quotation, also from Chapter x, discusses Joe's unique position as someone on the edge of both life and death. This borderline status is simultaneously the tragedy of Joe and the novel, and, as we see in this quotation, what makes him special and gives him hope. Because Joe is nearer than anyone else living to death, he has the authority to talk about death firsthand and to potentially make people change their minds about what they perceive to be worth dying for. In this regard, Joe's tragedy also makes him both a leader and a prophet.

This passage appears in Chapter xiv, at the end of Joe's long memory of prostitutes and women he has been with—a memory he experiences while his regular day nurse is masturbating him in an effort to alleviate whatever is making him tap his head. The chapter ends with a depiction of wartime Paris, which Joe had visited while on leave. The technique of the prose here is slightly different than the stream of consciousness used in most of the novel. Rather than of rendering Joe's thoughts as they come, this section reads as more of a montage—an impressionistic array intended to relay the feeling of Joe's time in Paris rather than a realistic plot line. This passage addresses the loneliness that Joe felt then, remembered through his current loneliness, and how both moments of loneliness were, for better or worse, momentarily alleviated by sex. This passage also points to Joe's underlying patriotism, or identification with his country. This patriotism works against much of what Joe argues in the novel, yet it remains as a contradictory force.

This selection appears in Chapter xix, when Joe is pondering his answer to the question "WHAT DO YOU WANT?" The question itself is dehumanizing and absurd to Joe, given how long he has waited to communicate and given the state of his body. The question sparks a sarcastic tirade in Joe, but this quotation comes from the section of the tirade that is only half-sarcastic. Joe knows what he wants—to get out of the hospital and be near people—and he presents this wish in terms that "they" can understand. He dehumanizes himself, espousing his worth as a freak-show exhibit. He also mimics the ideology of those who run the war, namely that the "army makes men" and that a man's worth can be measured in money. The sarcasm of the passage creates a vehicle for Joe's bitterness.

This passage appears in the final chapter of Johnny Got His Gun, after Joe realizes that the hospital staff will never let him out to be seen by others, nor will they even let him continue to be conscious and communicative. Joe's vision of the future is an apocalyptic one of unending war. He realizes from the lack of human compassion that the hospital staff has shown him that there will not be enough human compassion in the future to forestall further warfare. Instead, the technology of modern war will take over.