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 remembers past New Year’s Eves, in both Shale City and at the bakery in Los Angeles. Joe has decided that the current day is New Year’s Eve because he’s counted 365 days since he first started keeping track. The year went fast because he kept himself busy trying to keep track of time. He even learned how to tell the nurses apart by the feel of their hands.
An earlier chapter notes that Joe’s injury took place in September 1918, just a couple months before World War I’s end in November 1918. This means that Joe’s more hopeful feelings about his own life likely correspond with what’s going on in the outside world as it, like Joe, tries to rebuild in the aftermath of the war.
Themes
Joe imagines a new schedule for himself, going on walks every Sunday, where it’s always springtime, and not caring what day it really is to the people outside. Each day, he imagines himself going to sleep with Kareen. Though she must now be in her early twenties, she’ll always be 19 in his mind.
While the rat from Joe’s earlier nightmare represented the dark side of the human mind, this passage demonstrates the exact opposite, showing how a person can use their mind as a refuge from the outside world. Joe makes his current situation more bearable by taking solace in memories of happier times.
Themes
Joe wishes he could go back to America, but he figures that without a face or other identifying markers, people might misidentify him as British based on where he fell in battle. Joe always found the English soldiers strange, even stranger than the French soldiers.
In his interior monologue at the end of Book I, Joe argued against the idea of fighting for a homeland. This passage expands on the idea, since if Joe can easily be mistaken for British, perhaps the differences between the people of different countries are not so great after all.
Themes
Joe recalls the story of a German soldier that his British comrades nicknamed Lazarus. In the story, Lazarus wandered alone out of the fog near British lines, probably lost on patrol, so all the British fired at him until he fell. But after the corpse starts to reek, the corporal of the group decides it’s time to bury him. Later, the Germans fire artillery on the trenches, and while they don’t hurt any British, the dead German solder flies into the air and lands on some barbed wire, pointing at the British soldiers. Since he looks like he rose from the dead, they call him Lazarus.
In the Bible, Lazarus is a dead man that Jesus brings back to life. The Lazarus in this passage doesn’t literally come back to life—he just looks that way after an artillery shell explosion blows him out of his grave. In some way, Lazarus’s condition is similar to Joe’s (since they both get hit by artillery shells) but in other ways, it’s the opposite: Whereas Lazarus is dead but looks alive, Joe is alive but looks dead. This passage shows how war dehumanizes the enemy, as “Lazarus” becomes little more than a distant target for the British soldiers to fire at. When Lazarus rises from the grave and points at the British soldiers, his corpse seems to be accusing them, forcing them to remember that they killed a real person.
Themes
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The corporal buries Lazarus again, but he gets shot in the butt during the burial service and has to go on leave for eight weeks. A couple days after he gets hit, another artillery shell blows Lazarus out of his grave again. The British regiment opens fire on him to knock him off the barbed wire fence that he’s stuck on.
As Lazarus’s story goes on, it becomes more farcical, where the horror gets mixed with dark humor. The British soldiers want to keep Lazarus—and the horrors of war that he represents—buried deep, but he keeps rising up where they have to look at him.
Themes
An inexperienced, 18-year-old British soldier wants to prove his bravery, so he tries to sneak out one night to go on patrol. The next day, everyone finds him vomiting because when he tried to get through the barbed wire, he fell and stuck his whole arm right through Lazarus. This upsets the young soldier so much that he goes “stark crazy” and eventually ends up institutionalized. Back in the present, Joe wishes this young soldier a happy New Year’s.
After all the soldiers try to avoid Lazarus as much as possible, this 18-year-old soldier accidentally makes direct contact with Lazarus and ends up institutionalized. This suggests that the horrors of war are so extreme that anyone who faces them directly as the young soldier does with Lazarus’s body—will come away from the experience mentally scarred.
Themes
