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 feels a nurse washing him and is glad to not be alone. He feels relieved that seemingly the rat was only a dream, although he fears that even if it’s just a dream, it might come back. He tries to remember the tricks he used when he was younger to wake himself up from nightmares. The problem, however, is that these tricks involved opening his eyes, and Joe no longer has any eyes to open.
Joe’s inability to physically open his eyes mirrors his inability to discern between fantasy and reality. In Joe’s current condition, the rat can hurt him even if it isn’t technically real, showing how the war took a mental toll on Joe that is just as significant as the physical toll.
Themes
Joe feels certain that he’s currently awake and that the nurse is real. He decides that as soon as he feels sleepy, he’s going to force himself not to think about rats. But then he realizes that he’s not even sure what sleepiness will feel like in his current condition—now, everything feels like sleep. He has heard stories of other people developing new skills after losing one of their senses or part of their body, so he decides that he needs to learn how to tell the difference between being asleep and being awake.
Once Joe begins to tentatively accept that he’s stuck in his current condition, his thoughts turn more philosophical as he wonders what it means for someone without eyes to feel sleepy. Joe’s thinking also becomes more rational as he realizes that he needs to work out a system of determining what’s real and what’s just a hallucination.
Themes
