This will be the goddamndest dime's worth a man ever had. This will be a sensation in the show world and whoever sponsors my tour will be a new Barnum and have fine notices in all the newspapers because I am something you can really holler about. I am something you can push with a money back guarantee. I am the dead-man-who-is-alive… I am the man who made the world safe for democracy. If they won't fall for that then for Christ sake they're no men. Let them join the army because the army makes men.

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.

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