Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Johnny Got His Gun, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Horrors of War
The Value of Life
Elites vs. Common People
Time and Memory
Summary
Analysis
Joe’s thoughts swirl, mixing multiplication problems with astronomy, biblical quotes, and the plots of Charles Dickens books. As his thoughts come together, he realizes that all he has left is his mind. He wishes that he had memorized a book cover-to-cover so that he could put his mind to use and keep himself occupied.
Joe’s thoughts span a range of different types of knowledge, from math to science to religion to literature. Although Joe wasn’t an intellectual before his injury, his long period of mental isolation seems to have made him more introspective.
Themes
Joe decides he needs a new start. He thinks about time, which he remembers from history class is one of the first things that ancient humans paid attention to. He feels that if he learns to keep track of time, he’ll be able to hold his other thoughts in place too. All he knows right now is that time stopped for him one day in September 1918. Since then, he has no idea how much time has passed, since he was unconscious for part of it.
Joe tries to regain control of his life by better understanding time. The book explores the idea that people go to war because they forget history and don’t want to look at its horrors, and so Joe’s attempts to create his own calendar represent the opposite of that, as he makes a deliberate effort to make sense of time and remember history.
Themes
Joe works out a system of measuring time. He counts sixty seconds to get a sense for a minute, but as he keeps counting, he eventually loses track. He realizes his current plan won’t work because he can’t stay awake and count accurately for 24 hours to measure a day. Trying to remember seconds and minutes and hours all at the same time is too much when counting.
Joe’s first attempts to keep track of time are logical but not practical. As he tests new ideas, he learns the limits of his own mind and body. Rather than getting discouraged, however, Joe treats his attempts as experiments to learn from, showing his growth as a character.
Themes
Joe develops another system of measuring time. He notices that he has a bowel movement once every three or four visits from the nurse. But that doesn’t help because Joe doesn’t know how his current schedule of bowel movements matches up with a healthy person’s.
Cut off from the outside world, Joe has no concept of changing days or seasons, but he finds a way to replace them with other cycles, such as his own body rhythms and the coming and going of nurses.
Themes
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Finally, Joe gets the idea of using changes in temperature to tell time, figuring that warmth must signal sunrise. Knowing sunrise and sunset will allow him to count how many times the nurse visits in a day. At first, he struggles to keep track of temperature, either falling asleep too soon or wondering if his temperature feels different because of a fever. After more struggle and failure, he finally manages to get a better idea of time passing. He feels triumphant as he stays awake at dawn and almost thinks he can smell grass. He imagines the sun rising over a peaceful town, thinking that no matter what, he’ll always have dawn.
Book II of the novel is subtitled “The Living,” and while it also deals with the consequences of war, it also has a few hopeful moments, mostly related to Joe’s attempts to regain control of his life. Dawn is a common symbol of hope and new beginnings, and so Joe imagines that he can see the dawn because his new ability to keep track of time has given him a new lease on life. Joe’s belief that he’ll always have the dawn somehow suggests that all people, even those in seemingly impossible predicaments, have the potential for hope.
Themes
