This leads him to think about those who enlist 'little guys' into fighting wars over ideals. Bonham realizes even if loved ones were beside him, he would not know. He decides he must be able to discern reality from dream, for that is all he has left. Bonham despises the medical profession, which has profited from the war, learning techniques that culminate in saving him when they should have let him go.īonham feels a rat gnawing persistently at an unhealed side wound and only when his nurse is tending him does he realize the rat is a dream. He has one sense left: feeling on the remaining parts of his body.

Bonham emerges from his flashback only to realize that they are far more extensive and he is being kept alive against his will, unable to protest. Through flashbacks, Bonham recalls a failed high school romance and a one-day escape from reality into the Utah desert, contemplates friendship and betrayal and the antics of an amusing fellow in the bakery where he works in Los Angeles. Their farewell takes place against a mish-mash of patriotic songs, speeches, and prayers, by which point the lovers have no time for prayer.

He remembers saying farewell to beautiful nineteen-year-old Kareen Birkman after making love with her the night before the troop train arrives.

Bonham knows he has not come to make the world safe for democracy. The discovery process is slow, as he weaves in and out of consciousness, remembering the family and girlfriend he reluctantly leaves behind. World War I draftee Joe Bonham is lying in a hospital, bandaged all over and realizing he is at least deaf and has lost both arms. Johnny Got His Gun takes a harrowing look inside the mind of a World War I draftee who is lying helpless without arms, legs, mouth, ears, nose, or eyes, yet over the course of years is determined to reestablish contact with the outside world and tell 'little guys' never to allow bellicose politicians to butcher them again.

Johnny got his gun book buy