Booktalk: Johnny Got His Gun

Published in 1938, on the cusp of WWII, Dalton Trumbo's Johnny Got His Gun remains an achingly powerful testament to the power of imagination and words to influence how we might feel about the world.

Setting the story within the mind of an exceedingly wounded soldier from World War I, Trumbo fashions a novel of remembrance and personal terror that dismantles and reassembles what it mans to be awake, to be alive, to be patriotic, and to die.

The scope of his imagination is frightful. The directness of his arguments is scalding. And the imagery of his writing takes one to places within time and doubt and courage that we may not ever wish venture on our own.

Upon finishing it, I immediately reread Chapter VIII where he wrestles with how to tell whether he is awake or asleep (the scope of his imagination), Chapter IX where he tenderly remembers a fishing trip with his dad (the imagery of his writing), and Chapter X; his scathing indictment of going to war (the directness of his arguments).

I cannot imagine literature being much more beautiful, brutal, and important than this.