a book
Johnny Got His Gun
Dalton Trumbo · 1998 · 243 pages
“Trumbo sets this story down almost without pause or punctuation and with a fury accounting to eloquence.”—The New York Times
This was no ordinary war. This was a war to make the world safe for democracy. And if democracy was made safe, then nothing else mattered—not the millions of dead bodies, nor the thousands of ruined lives. . . . This is no ordinary novel. This is a novel that never takes the easy way out: it is shocking, violent, terrifying, horrible, uncompromising, brutal, remorseless and gruesome . . . but so is war.
This was no ordinary war. This was a war to make the world safe for democracy. And if democracy was made safe, then nothing else mattered—not the millions of dead bodies, nor the thousands of ruined lives. . . . This is no ordinary novel. This is a novel that never takes the easy way out: it is shocking, violent, terrifying, horrible, uncompromising, brutal, remorseless and gruesome . . . but so is war.
recommended by 3 people
sourced from public statements
Michael Moore
“Trumbo’s novel about a wounded soldier is a very powerful antiwar statement. Ironically, it’s set in the war to end all wars, World War I, and I read it while the United States was in Vietnam. When I was a boy, war was romanticized: Nobody really important got hurt, and the good guys always won. The movies and the books were all John Wayne! Gung ho! Let’s go to war! At first you don’t realize the situation the soldier is in—that he’s lying in a hospital bed. The book was an eye-opener, and I’ve always encouraged teenagers to read it.”↗
Howard Zinn
“A powerful antiwar novel written between the two World Wars.”↗
