42 pages • 1 hour read
Dalton TrumboJohnny Got His Gun
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1939A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Book 2, Chapters 15-20Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Book 2, Chapter 15 Summary
Joe continues his tapping with no response from the nurses. He begins to think that he is going insane, and that his nurse, by refusing to comprehend his efforts, is “keeping [him] a prisoner” (189), which leads him in turn to think about all the “little guys” (189) throughout history who have been imprisoned and their suffering. He considers the Carthaginian slaves who were blinded, the Roman slaves who were forced to fight each other in the Colosseum and the Egyptian slaves who were forced to build the pyramids. Joe considers himself to be like them as he too was taken away from his home without his consent, then effectively imprisoned within his own body. Joe believes his situation is even worse because his cell is smaller, and he is not allowed to die. He then senses, from the heavy vibrations on the floor, that a man has entered his room. The man is a doctor. The doctor injects him with morphine to stop him from tapping, and Joe feels himself drifting off to sleep.
Book 2, Chapter 16 Summary
At first, Joe’s experience of being on morphine is one of extreme tranquility where “it seemed that he was relaxing in every muscle of his body relaxing in his brain” (194). He sees a beautiful kaleidoscope of colors and hears heavenly music, followed by silence and a rush of fear and anxiety where the whole universe seems to be flying towards him. Joe then hears the voice of Christ’s mother, Mary, asking for her son. Joe imagines that Christ is with him at the train station, at a table, playing blackjack with other soldiers about to go to war. Christ is there with the soldiers because they are going to be killed and with Joe because he will be “the same as dead” (200). Then Christ gets on top of the departing train, which Joe jumps off, before chasing Christ and crying at his feet.
Book 2, Chapter 17 Summary
Joe wakes up from the drug-induced dream and discovers by the different vibrations and the number of the steps entering his room that he has a new nurse. She puts her hand against his forehead in a way that no one has ever done before, and then opens his nightshirt and starts tracing letters on his skin. He then realizes that she is tracing “Merry Christmas,” and Joe is overjoyed. He recalls Christmases at home in Shale City, where his mother would read a festive poem to him and his sisters, then read the Nativity story from the Bible.
Book 2, Chapter 18 Summary
Realizing that the new nurse might be able to understand him, Joe taps out “S.O.S” (218) in front of her very carefully and repeatedly. She grasps that he is trying to convey some need or want. But she does not know what, so she very thoroughly goes through several options, touching first the bed pan against him, then taking off his cover and touching the bandage at his side. After each of these actions Joe shakes his head. Then she taps her finger against his forehead four times and Joe realizes that she understands that he is trying to communicate through Morse code. Joe then feels her run out of his room to tell somebody who knows the code. Joe later feels a nurse and a man (whose presence and gender he senses from the heavier vibrations) enter his room. The latter taps out on Joe’s forehead “what do you want?” (226)
Book 2, Chapter 19 Summary
Joe considers his answer and at first starts “to resent the question” (228), viewing it as patronizing, since what he really wants—the return of his physical senses and abilities—nobody can give him. He then realizes that what he wants is to go outside, as that way he would be amongst people and would no longer be a prisoner in the hospital. Joe reflects that this would cost money and the government probably would not want to pay it. He decides he could pay his own way by becoming a “curiosity” and “educational exhibit” (232) that would teach and warn people about the realities and horrors of war. He thus taps out this request as a response to the man’s question.
Book 2, Chapter 20 Summary
Joe feels the man go away to get a reply to his request, then the man returns and taps out on Joe’s head “what you ask [for] is against regulations” (242-43). Joe is grief-stricken with this answer and the fact that they are condemning him to live the rest of his life in total darkness and isolation. Just as he is trying to tap out a plea for them to reconsider, he feels a needle injecting him again with morphine to stop him tapping. The morphine provokes in Joe another vision. In his vision, he is a new Christ carrying a message of the future—a message of a new and more awful war to come. In the aftermath of this vision, Joe understands the real reason they will not let him go out in public: it is because letting people see him could disturb plans for this future conflict by dissuading ordinary people from fighting in it.
Book 2, Chapters 15-20 Analysis
With the arrival of the new day nurse, Joe experiences his most important connection yet in the hospital. The nurse is able to achieve two important things: she treats Joe with patience and empathy, and she also recognizes his attempts at communicating through Morse code. She demonstrates her empathy through her touch, putting her hand against Joe’s forehead without “hastily throwing the covers back over him [. . .] or running out of the room” (204) in disgust at his condition. The nurse honors Joe’s humanity through looking beyond the horror of his state, treating him with respect and care, highlighting The Importance of Human Connection.
Furthermore, in her tracing out of “Merry Christmas” on Joe’s chest, the new nurse tries to communicate with Joe and express joy at being in his presence. Joe describes this as “for the first time someone breaking through” (207) and experiences it “like an enormous laugh in the midst of death” (207). While up until now Joe has used various tactics to reach the outside world, the new nurse’s gestures are an attempt from the outside world to communicate with him. Significantly, it is this nurse who recognizes Joe’s tapping as the Morse code it is. Previous nurses and doctors had “taken his tapping as a nervous habit as a disease as the whim of a child as a symptom of insanity” (217), thereby ignoring and pathologizing it. Through the nurse’s genuine desire to understand Joe and her innate empathy with him, the nurse recognizes that he is trying to communicate, and—most crucially—she seeks a means of ensuring his message is understood. For Joe this successful act of communication is almost miraculous, as if “a stone had been rolled away from a tomb” (224).
Unfortunately, the results of Joe’s communication are not what he wants or expects. Joe finds the first hint of this in the question which the man who knows Morse code asks Joe. Expecting to attract the attention of the whole hospital, Joe instead gets one man and the curt message, “what do you want?” (226) in response to his years-long efforts to connect. For Joe, this question already betrays an ignorance about his condition, for as Joe sarcastically wonders, “did they think he would ask for an ice cream cone?” (228) The man’s question assumes that Joe was tapping because he wanted some minor modification to his existing treatment. The man’s response trivializes what Joe has achieved in breaking through his extreme isolation, with the man attempting to treat him like any other patient.
Still, worse is to come. When Joe does formulate a “want,” the man claims that his request is “against regulations” (242), meaning that Joe will not be taken outside and given the one meaningful thing they could do for him. Instead, he is to remain out of sight in the hospital. As Joe’s final morphine-induced reverie reveals, Joe’s strong desire to be taken on a public tour to expose the true horrors of war alarms the authorities, as his condition would be an embarrassment to powerful forces which seek to romanticize the “sacrifices” of the First World War. Most importantly, Joe’s revelation of the truth could jeopardize support for the next major war. Joe’s painful existence undermines The Centrality of Control and Propaganda in War, which the authorities seek to maintain. Joe’s continuing isolation in the hospital and the denial of his request thus illustrates his ultimate helplessness in seeking to prevent similar tragedies happening to other young men, as well as the emptiness of his own unwitting sacrifice.
