Johnny op het internet

Still, if every mother could somehow get every teenage son to read Johnny Got His Gun, we might be able to avoid the next nightmare. And not just American mothers. War, after all, is an accepted form of insanity practiced intermittently and with some pride by all humans.

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Trumbo's premise is devastatingly simple: For 300 pages he puts you inside the head of a World War I veteran. We share Johnny's*** memories of life before the war. With him, we recall how he was swept up in the tide of patriotic fervor as war came closer and closer. He was sure that if his country would just give him a gun along with a bit of training, he could cross the ocean and find glory as he defeated the enemy.

And we also share, in relentless detail, the horrific nature of his present situation.

Johnny, you see, wound up in a trench in France as a shell exploded nearby. Johnny survived, but with a certain amount of collateral damage. He lost both legs, both arms, his face, his eyes, his ears, and his voice. He is the ultimate basket case.

Johnny got his gun, all right. And now everybody agrees he's a hero. The only thing is, he's also a monster--this ultimate basket case--tucked away in a veteran's hospital where nobody but the medical staff has to think about him.

Is war worth it? Is pride in any system of human governance that repeatedly leads to war justified? We all, experts and non experts, have various answers to those questions. Before you speak your own answer with too much confidence, I'd urge you to get a second opinion from Johnny. Lend him an ear, which he is in much need of.

Fiction? Yes. But we can dismiss it only because we choose not to think about the real Johnny's who are still tucked away in veterans' hospitals, well tended unto the end of their days of suffering.

Propaganda? Yes. But, unlike the abstract propaganda of those who speak of glorious and just wars, it is propaganda based in the day to day, minute to minute, second to second pain and deprivation of a patriot-soldier who, unlike the thousands lying beneath neat white crosses in Europe and elsewhere, didn't quite die. Almost, but not quite.

And that is the horrible challenge that Dalton Trumbo presents to the reader. Will you look, or will you look away?