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
It’s so hot that Joe can barely breathe. He hallucinates now that he and his friend Howie are working on the railroad. It’s a tough job where everyone works quietly and seriously in the desert heat. Many of the other workers are Mexican. Joe and Howie assumed they’d get lunch on the job, but the foreman has nothing to offer them. Some of the Mexican workers offer fried egg sandwiches with red peppers, but Joe and Howie refuse. Just then, all the Mexican workers get up and start heading down the tracks. Joe and Howie ask the foreman what’s going on, and he tells them the other workers are going for a swim.
Joe has spent most of his life living in a relatively small town in Colorado, so meeting so many Mexican people is a culture shock to him—although perhaps not as much of a shock as going to Europe for war will be. The Mexican workers try to be kind to Joe and Howie by offering food, but their fear of the unknown stops them from trying the unusual sandwiches. Joe often thinks about swimming, and the literal swimming in this memory seems to suggest how in the present, when Joe is in the hospital, his thoughts are metaphorically swimming, caught between past and present.
Themes
Joe and Howie run to take a swim, not realizing the canal is two miles away. At the canal, Mexican workers strip down and swim. Joe and Howie join them, though they’re embarrassed to be so pale. Eventually, everyone gets out, dresses, and runs back to work. Joe and Howie lose energy that afternoon and begin to collapse in the heat. In his daze, Joe thinks about Diane, a girl he was seeing back in Shale City, who cheated on him by going on a date with another guy named Glen Hogan. At last, Joe hears that it’s the end of the day.
The Mexican workers are so desperate for a break that they’re willing to run a full two miles just to go swimming, showing the lengths they’ll go to in order to make their working situation more endurable. Joe and Howie’s pale skin reflects not only how they come from a different (and more privileged) background than the Mexican workers but also how they aren’t used to working long hours in the sun.
Themes
Joe and Howie go back to their bunkhouse with the other workers. They’re too tired to get dinner, so they go right to their bunks and lie down. Later that night, around 10 p.m., Joe feels Howie shaking him awake. Howie has just gotten a telegram from a girl named Onie back home, begging Howie to forgive her for going on a date with Glen Hogan and take her back. It turns out Glen Hogan dumped Onie for Diane. Joe is angry that Howie woke him up for this.
Compared to the Mexican workers, Joe and Howie have led privileged lives, and so their whole trip to the desert is a wake-up call about how difficult some other people’s lives are. They also begin to understand the hierarchy of the workplace, where despite having many things in common, a foreman and the regular workers don’t have quite the same status.
Themes
Howie says they can take a gravel train back to Shale City that night. He wants to go back to see Onie. Joe protests at first, but he agrees to come. Joe thinks about how he hit Bill Harper, the innocent boy who delivered the news to him that Diane was on a date with Glen Hogan, only to go to the local theater and find Diane and Glen together. That was the night Joe and Howie made their pact to go work in the desert and forget all about girls.
This passage reveals why Joe and Howie went to go work in the desert in the first place: they wanted to get away from some drama involving girls back in their hometown. While this passage suggests that Joe and Howie’s troubles in the desert (and later Joe’s experience in the war) are more significant than this small-town drama, human connection is an important theme in the book, and so Joe’s relationships with girls are also important.
Themes
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Joe and Howie board the gravel train back to Shale City. Joe thinks of Diane and hopes she isn’t with Glen Hogan anymore. When the train arrives, Howie goes immediately to see Onie, leaving Joe alone in the dark. Joe feels bad, then he realizes that part of the reason why he feels bad is that he’s walking on Diane’s street. He’s dirty from working all day and he doesn’t want her to see him that way.
As Joe and Howie leave their job in the desert, their problems in the desert begin to fade away while their problems from home become more real again. They learn that, while their problems in Shale City might not be as difficult as the problems of working in the desert, they’re still real, and it isn’t possible to just run away from them.
Themes
As Joe passes Diane’s house, he sees her on the front steps kissing Bill Harper. Joe goes home, his whole body aching after the long day. He’s sad not only to lose Diane but also to lose his friend Bill. It will be even harder to forgive Diane for kissing Bill than if she’d stayed with Glen Hogan. Joe feels that compared to Howie (who has Onie) or even the Mexican workers in the desert (who have their own women), he has nothing worthwhile in his own life.
Bill Harper, who seemed to earn Joe’s trust by telling him about Diane and Glen Hogan earlier, now betrays Joe by kissing Diane. Before, Joe seemed to naively believe that things would always be the same—that Diane would always be his and that Bill Harper would always be loyal—and so this passage is an important coming-of-age moment when Joe learns about the nature of change.
Themes
Back in the present in the hospital, Joe reflects on how his worries about girls used to feel so real but don’t anymore. He imagines Glen Hogan and Howie still living somewhere in Colorado, but he knows that Bill Harper died in the war. Joe feels mixed up and tries to remember what he’s doing. He doesn’t feel hot anymore. Now, everything is cool.
The experience with the Mexican workers was Joe’s first hint that the world contained greater problems than his worries about girls, but the war gave him even greater perspective. Joe’s shift from hot to cool (similar to what he felt after spending the night with Kareen), once again symbolizes having to face the cold reality of war.
Themes
