Johnny Got His Gun Themes

What is it good for? War is the crux of Johnny Got His Gun. Were it not for war, Joe would be living his normal life, and we probably wouldn't find that life all that compelling to read about. Inst...

"Why is propaganda so much more successful when it stirs up hatred than when it tries to stir up friendly feeling?" asked the British philosopher Bertrand Russell in 1930, long before it was defini...

Prison sucks in general, but it doesn't get much worse than being a prisoner in your own body, does it? At least, that's what Joe thinks in Johnny Got His Gun. Try this little experiment: next time...

One of the things that Joe dwells on a lot during the course of Johnny Got His Gun is how he is worse off than if he were dead. His suffering doesn't necessarily take the form of physical pain, but...

The title of Johnny Got His Gun comes from a popular song called "Over There." Over where? Over in Europe, far away from our hero Joe's home. What's he doing so far away from home? What's the point...

So, why get your gun and go over there in the first place?One of the big questions Johnny Got His Gun asks is why people feel like war is an obligation. While Joe doesn't necessarily go the way of...

So, who wants war, anyway?One of the main anti-war stances of Johnny Got His Gun is that war is encouraged by class inequality. What the heck does that mean? It means that the working classes tend...

Did you know that the original title of Johnny Got His Gun was All Quiet on the Western Front and Zombies?Yeah, that's because it wasn't. But we would still like to point out that as a self-proclai...