NOVEL COMPARISON

'Johnny Got his Gun' and 'Man's Search for Meaning'



'Johnny Got his Gun' and 'Man's Search for Meaning'

Introduction

The book, “Johnny Got his Gun,” is an anti-war novel published in 1939 by Dalton Trumbo. This book narrates the story about a man who has suffered grave injuries during the war and is left as a lifeless body. The book, “Man's Search for Meaning,” is written by Dr. Frankl which tells the narrative of the psychological stages commonly passed by an inmate in a concentration camp, daily life inevitably tells us also of their depression, their anxiety, their health broken, his hunger, the many attacks physical and psychological by camp guards and a long list of equally outrageous situations. An inmate in a concentration camp apparently believes that this lost and all alone. This paper discusses both of the novels and compares and contrasts them.

Johnny Got his Gun

Johnny Got His Gun is a vivid anti-war novel published in 1939 by Dalton Trumbo who also wrote the screenplay and direct in 1971 the eponymous film. In Spain, both the novel and the film were known as Johnny Got His Gun. In Argentina, as Johnny went to war. Johnny Got His Gun tells the story of Joe Bonham, a soldier of the First World War horribly maimed in front. Johnny Got His Gun is divided into Book I, "The Dead" and Book II, "The Living." "The Dead" is structured with chapters alternating from present to past as the protagonist, Joe Bonham, attempts to come to grips with what has happened to him (Trumbo, 2007). "The Living" concentrates on the present, though there are occasional reflections of the past. The novel is written in first person, an extended monologue—the mind, memories, and hallucinations of the protagonist.

A U.S. soldier is wounded by an explosion during the First World War. In that accident, Johnny loses all his limbs, and senses of sight, hearing, smell and taste. Reduced to a living torso, and almost completely isolated from reality, recalls his most important memories, until they consume you in dreams and nightmares and is unable to distinguish reality from fantasy. After several years incapacitated, unable to communicate with physicians and general via Morse code, moving in spasms head forward and backward (Rees, 2005). Asks to be killed, but his request is ignored, and his body is left useless and immobilized in a store, and kept for the study and advancement of medicine.

The trauma and terror of these discoveries are like a bad dream; at times, Joe thinks he is dreaming or does not know when he is awake and when he is asleep. The nightmares shake him but being awake shakes him too. Months later, a young substitute nurse recognizes the code, and Joe's attempt to communicate. His joy at being acknowledged a live man with a mind is a "new wild frantic happiness." When he answers her question, "What do you want?" the answer is, "What you ask is against regulations."

What did he want? He wants, of course, his life back—his senses, his ...