I just read "Johnny Got His Gun."

wow

No arms, no legs, no speech, no sight, no hearing...wow

Golly it's good to get some input that counters the old doctrine of Dulce et decorum est (it is sweet to die for one's country)...

especially now! Gosh...I have a friend going off to Fallujah pretty soon!

[ 04-09-2004, 08:15 PM: Message edited by: Ilander ]

Author? plot? More details please Ilander [img]graemlins/heee.gif[/img]

Okay, Dalton Trumbo wrote the book around the time of World War I, mostly in protest of American involement, but also as a denouncement of war in general (I did make a minor mistake, however, syaing that it was leftist propoganda, because at the time, it would have been rightist...).

The main character, Joe Bonham is from a sleepy little town in the middle of nowhere USA, but found himself drafted to "make the world safe for democracy."

The book begins with Joe lying in his hospital bed after suffering grievious injuries---he is now a deaf, blind, quadruple amputee being kept alive by machines, thanks to the methods of modern warfare and modern medicine.

The book chronicles his thoughts over the course of about six years in the hospital, and how he tries desperately to regain some aspect of being alive, while remembering the time that he was not one of the living dead.

I didn't read the book, I just watched the Metallica video. [img]graemlins/heee.gif[/img]

Oh, yeah, and the Metallica song One is based on it...

Be warned...they are not the same...don't rely on that video for the book's storyline...I'm pretty sure Dalton Trumbo had a message that was a bit different from Hetfeild's...

[ 04-12-2004, 10:41 AM: Message edited by: Ilander ]

God, I love Metallica! Besides, I'm sure James' message was much better debated than Trumbo's, anyways. [img]tongue.gif[/img] Course, now I have to read this.... Nah, movie it is! :D

I hate to say it, but NEVERMIND TALLICA, guys! C'mon! Books are not their domain...

Anyway, the book is a good one...well worth one's time...though it IS pretty liberal by modern standards...and very graphic. No punches are pulled, though the perspective is masterfully carried out...Dalton's pretty good about staying in character.

Dalton Trumbo was blacklisted during the late '40s and '50s for having communist sympathies, so I don't know how you can call him a rightist. :confused:

BTW, One is a cool video.

When the book was written, it was opposed to World War One, and as such was isolationist. That made it rightist at the time it was written...It rapidly swung around to the political left, but the point is, it didn't really start that way...Trumbo himself advocated its censureship during World War Two, after many special interests (communists included) wished to use his book to carry their cause. More than anything else, his blacklisting seems to have been the result of McCarthyism at work with the red scare...