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 hallucinates being in the bakery in Los Angeles, walking 11 miles every night, all night long without getting tired. Friday night is the busiest because of the Saturday morning deliveries, so extra workers often come to the shop, often from the Midnight Mission (a local charity organization that serves meals at midnight after church services). One of the extra workers is a Porto Rican man named Jose. Jose seems luckier and better-looking than many of the other workers from the Mission.
The similarity in names between Joe and Jose (as well as their supervisor, Jody) shows how much these characters have in common, despite coming from different circumstances. Jose’s association with the Midnight Mission suggests that he lives in poverty and is likely homeless, which is why his good looks and good luck are so extraordinary.
Themes
Jose tells Joe that California is great for people with nowhere else to go, since you can sleep outside most of the year. Jose would like to get a steadier job at the bakery, partly because he’d like to stay clean without having to use the disinfectant-filled water at the Mission. Jose asks around at the factory if anyone has any connections to the movie studios, where Jose would like to work in research, but of course no one in the bakery has any such connections.
Like the Mexican men that Joe worked with earlier, Jose helps Joe realize how people in different situations live. Jose’s situation is more precarious, since he lacks a full-time job and needs to rely on the Mission for basic needs like water to clean himself with. Jose’s questions about the movie business may seem naïve, but they also show how he is hopeful and perhaps less jaded than Joe.
Themes
During the Easter rush, when another worker quits, Joe’s foreman, Jody Simmons, hires Jose full time. Jose tells his coworkers a story about a rich girl back in New York City who wants to marry him; he met her while working as her family’s chauffeur. No one believes him until one day an expensive piece of stationary with a Fifth Avenue return address shows up. The girl says she has come into some money that’s hers, not her parents, and she wants Jose’s real address so that she can come meet him to marry him. Everyone encourages Jose to give her his address, but Jose himself hesitates because he knows he doesn’t love the girl back.
Jose’s life blurs the line between fact and fiction, though the letter he receives from New York seems to confirm at least some of his incredible claim. Jose refuses to do what people expect him to do, which confuses the other workers, who go along with whatever authority figures tell them to do. Jose’s reluctance to give his address may be related to the fact that he's homeless (while also leaving open the possibility that perhaps he is playing a hoax).
Themes
Other workers in the factory get the idea that Jose must be crazy. Then one day he tells them he’s leaving because he found a better job—he found a position at a Hollywood studio after all. Jose worries about how to resign to Jody Simmons, since he still feels grateful for the bakery job. He doesn’t quit and claims to be working both jobs, getting only 45 minutes of sleep at night.
Jose’s stories only become more unbelievable the longer he works at the factory. Additionally, Joe seems to be remembering all of these details as he lies in the hospital, potentially further blurring the line of what’s real and what he has imagined. Jose’s life illustrates the difficulty of figuring out the truth, an issue that Joe himself often struggles with when he’s in the hospital.
Themes
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After talking with the other workers, Jose gets the idea to force Jody Simmons to fire him. He intentionally pretends to accidentally drop several pies right in front of Jody Simmons, but this isn’t enough to get fired. The next day, Jose plans to dump a whole rack of pies, and all the other workers look forward to seeing what will happen. Before Jose arrives, the other workers notice a box on Jody’s desk. Jody opens it and finds 24 roses with no card. He doesn’t understand the gift or where it came from, but he says he’ll give them to his wife.
Jose’s code of honor—where he can’t quit his job at the bakery but can get fired—doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. In a way, Jose’s outsider perspective helps to highlight the arbitrary nature of the concept of honor in the first place. The 24 roses seem to be a preemptive apology from Jose for the pies he’s about to destroy, but once again, Jose’s rather unusual gift demonstrates how Jose refuses to act in a conventional way.
Themes
Jose gets nervous as the time for spilling the pies draws near. At last, it’s time, and Jose spills 180 pies on the floor. Jody Simmons comes down and starts cursing at Jose, firing him and telling him to get out. Jose leaves, feeling bad about what he did to Jody by destroying the pies. Jose reveals that he’s the one who secretly ordered the flowers for Jody. He doesn’t care that Jody will never know that Jose gave him those flowers. When Jose leaves the bakery, no one ever sees him again, but Jody receives a money order for all the lost pies. Back in the present, Joe suddenly feels like he’s talking to Jose. But then he realizes that he’s actually in a hospital bed, not the bakery.
The money order for the pies that Jody receives from Jose raises even more questions about Jose’s life. If Jose was telling the truth about his life and is homeless, then presumably paying for so many pies would be a substantial hardship for him. Even more important to Jose than the money, however, is his sense of honor, which is why sacrifices the money to pay for the pies. Honor comes up again and again throughout the novel, usually in the context of war, but this chapter challenges traditional ideas of honor by showing how it can come in unexpected places and not just from the battlefield, as many believe.
Themes
