DUers are you familiar with "Johnny Got His Gun"?

[LSK]

"It was funny how calm he was. He was quiet just like a storekeeper taking spring inventory and saying to himself I see I have no eyes better put that down in the order book. He had no legs and no arms and no eyes and no ears and no nose and no mouth and no tongue What a hell of a dream. It must be a dream. Of course sweet god it's a dream. He'd have to wake up or he'd go nuts. Nobody could live like that. A person in that condition would be dead and he wasn't dead so he wasn't in that condition. Just dreaming."

snip

"He thought here you are Joe Bonham lying like a side of beef all the rest of your life and for what? Somebody tapped you on the shoulder and said come along son we're going to war. So you went.

But why? In any other deal even like buying a car or running an errand you had the right to say what's there in it for me? Otherwise you'd be buying bad cars for too much money or running errands for fools and starving to death. It was a kind of duty you owed yourself that when anybody said come on son do this or do that you should stand up and say look mister why should I do this for who am I doing it and what am I going to get out of it in the end? But when a guy comes along and says here come with me and risk your life and maybe die or be crippled why then you've got no rights. You haven't even the right to say yes or no or I'll think it over. There are plenty of laws to protect guys' money even in war time but there's nothing on the books says a man's life's his own.

Of course a lot of guys were ashamed. Somebody said let's go out and fight for liberty and so they went and got killed without ever once thinking about liberty. And what kind of liberty were they fighting for anyway? How much liberty and whose idea of liberty? Were they fighting for the liberty of eating free ice cream cones all their lives or for the liberty of robbing anybody they pleased whenever they wanted to or what? You tell a man he can't rob and you take away some of his liberty. You've got to. What the hell does liberty mean anyhow? It's just a word like house or table or any other word. Only it's a special kind of word. A guy says house and he can point to a house to prove it. But a guy says come on let's fight for liberty and he can't show you liberty. He can't prove the thing he's talking about so how in the hell can he be telling you to fight for it?

No sir anybody who went out and got into the front line trenches to fight for liberty was a goddamn fool and the guy who got him there was a liar. Next time anybody came gabbling to him about liberty- what did he mean next time? There wasn't going to be any next time for him. But the hell with that. If there could be a next time and somebody said let's fight for liberty he would say mister my life is important. I'm not a fool and when I swap my life for liberty I've got to know in advance what liberty is and whose idea of liberty we're talking about and just how much of that liberty we're going to have. And what's more mister are you as much interested in liberty as you want me to be? And maybe too much liberty will be as bad as too little liberty and I think you're a goddamn fourflusher talking through your hat and I've already decided that I like the liberty I've got right here the liberty to walk and see and hear and talk and eat and sleep with my girt I think I like that liberty better than fighting for a lot of things we won't get and ending up without any liberty at all. Ending up dead and rotting before my life is even begun good or ending up like a side of beef. Thank you mister. You fight for liberty. Me I don't care for some."

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/General/JohnnyGotHisGun.html

[Old and In the Way]

1. That book will forever be burned in my mind.

I made sure my 2 kids read it. What a twist at the end...

[Mythsaje]

2. I saw it in film class in college...

It was truly horrible...

Then Metallica did their "One" song and video.

[wildhorses]

3. bookmarking and recommending

[Catch22Dem]

4. Incredible book

My dad made me read it years ago. I re-read it about 5 years ago and it was even more moving. My grandpa made me read Catch-22 when I was about 12 and I didn't really understand it. Then I read it again in college after several years of my own military service. No book has had a bigger impression on me.

[Moloch]

5. Is that the movie that was the basis for the Metallica video..

"One?"

[LSK]

6. yes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Got_His_Gun

[GreenPartyVoter]

8. Yah, I remember that video

[LostInAnomie]

23. That was a damn good video.

I remember watching it as a kid and just being so shocked I couldn't put it into words. To this day whenever anyone asks me what the greatest video of all time is I always say "One."

[Moloch]

24. oh absolutely....

I was about 6 or 7 when that video came out and it gave me horrible nightmares.. I've never liked anything Metallica has done since..

[w8liftinglady]

7. OMG-one of the most effective anti-war movies ever.

this is a fantastic book...a must read

[Clark2008]

9. One...

[Pastiche423]

10. Watched the film years ago

It was depressing and distressing. I still can't get several scenes out of my mind.

[Patchuli]

11. I was about 17 when that came out

and I'm a peacemonger. It really shook me up.

Here is a survey to take to see where you stand psychologically with the Iraq War. It's very telling.

http://neuropolitics.org/Processsurvey2006q4p1.asp

*edited for grammar oops*

[LSK]

14. maybe you should make it your own thread??

Not sure what the answers are telling me thou.

I scored:

32
36
64
59
37

[lyonn]

17. Took test , makes one think about their views, sorta fun

Score:
37
39
75
70
34

hummm? It appears I may be abnormal, ha

[Patchuli]

32. It seemed related to me

My numbers were: 47, 48, 89, 82, 43. Boy do I ever have an aversion to war.

[Tom Joad]

22. You must mean the movie, not the book. The book is from 1939, the movie from 1971

[Patchuli]

31. I did mean the movie

and those images are burned on my brain.

[valerief]

12. Never read the book, but I saw the movie. Verrrrrrry powerful. nt

[DoYouEverWonder]

13. I had to read it in HS

It should be a must read for every teen, especially anyone that is considering joining the military.

[laststeamtrain]

15. Dalton Trumbo was a very great man

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalton_Trumbo

Driven from his career in Hollywood during the "McCarthy era". He was what they called then a 'premature anti-fascist'.

I'll alway respect Kirk Douglas for being the one to put his (Trumbo's) real name on the credits of SPARTACUS.

JOHNNY is a great book & film.

[Jcrowley]

16. K&R n/t

[struggle4progress]

18. Read it as a child during the Vietnam War.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

19. Excellent antiwar book. I read it during the Vietnam War era while I was in High School.

Trumbo was a remarkable man and I would love to see a film of his life some day.

One of my most favorite poems that I read back then.. I read this in my speech class, 1968.

my sweet old etcetera

my sweet old etcetera
aunt lucy during the recent

war could and what
is more did tell you just
what everybody was fighting

for,
my sister

Isabel created hundreds
(and
hundreds)of socks not to
mention fleaproof earwarmers
etcetera wristers etcetera, my
mother hoped that

i would die etcetera
bravely of course my father used
to become hoarse talking about how it was
a privilege and if only he
could meanwhile my

self etcetera lay quietly
in the deep mud et

cetera
(dreaming,
et
cetera, of
Your smile
eyes knees and of your Etcetera)

ee cummings

[Tom Joad]

21. He was blacklisted during the McCarthy error.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

27. I know and he won an Oscar during that time with someone as his Front.

Then Kirk Douglas hired him to do Spartacus, breaking the blacklist. Tears here for Douglas' courage.
Trumbo wrote some amazing screenplays, and my most sentimental favorite was Roman Holiday and probably the most powerful IMHO was a little Kirk Douglas film called Lonely Are The Brave.

[Tom Joad]

20. Hell ya. It made a peacenik out of me.

The part i have here http://www.tomjoad.org/johnnygothisgun.htm also in the link in the OP was read at an anti-Vietnam war demo by a young actor at the time, Mike Farrell (pre-MASH days). Not long after the march I saw Mike's speech as it was broadcast on a local pbs station, and i was very moved by it, and got the book. So i was a very young person in High School reading this, and that, along with other things (read "Hiroshima" too) made a very deep impression on me. so in some small way, Mike Farrell (and Dalton Trumbo) is partly responsible for my being an anti-war activist, and i was lucky enough to tell Mike so personally recently.

From the book:
Put the guns into our hands and we will use them. Give us the slogans and we will turn them into realities. Sing the battle hymns and we will take them up where you left off. Not one not ten not ten thousand not a million not ten millions not a hundred millions but a billion two billions of us all the people of the world we will have the slogans and we will have the hymns and we will have the guns and we will use them and we will live. Make no mistake of it we will live. We will be alive and we will walk and talk and eat and sing and laugh and feel and love and bear our children in tranquility in security in decency in peace. You plan the wars you masters of men plan the wars and point the way and we will point the gun.

The novel “johnny got his gun” was written by Dalton Trumbo in 1939.

[OneBlueSky]

25. in 1971, Dalton Trumbo wrote and directed a screen version of this classic . . .

starring Timothy Bottoms, Jason Robards, Donald Sutherland, and many others . . . if you haven't seen it yet, it's well worth your while to either purchase or rent it . . . film and book both highly recommended . . .



Johnny Got His Gun (1971)
http://www.amazon.com/Johnny-Got-His-Timothy-Bottoms/dp/B00023JH68/sr=1-1/qid=1168412305/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/105-4659789-9822058?ie=UTF8&s=dvd

Plot Synopsis: A young American soldier, hit by a shell on the last day of the First World War, lies in a hospital bed, a quadruple amputee who has lost his eyes, ears, mouth and nose. He remains conscious, and able to reason, and tries to communicate to his doctors his wish that he be put on show in a carnival as a demonstration of the horrors of war.

http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0067277/

[Lisa]

26. strange to think that Timothy Bottoms went on to portray George W. Bush

... and if Bush has even read the book or seen the movie, he's in total denial about it.

Personally I think that everyone who becomes the head of a government should have to read that book.

[dubykc]

28. Excellent book and movie. Too bad the author ...

was "black-listed" for publishing it.

[Tom Joad]

34. He wasn't blacklisted for publishing this book. BTW, he did not want it published during WWII

I think other activities got him blacklisted.

[catmandu57]

29. I read it when I was 17

Turned me into a peacenik as well, seventeen is the right age to pick this up.

[bluetrain]

30. Great book. Beyond the politics, the writing itself is just top notch, you

can hear Trumbo's typewriter pounding away while you read it. It was one of those books, like In Cold Blood, that were so uncomfortable to read I foced myself to get through it in a day so I wouldn't have to stay in the feeling any longer. But the writing is so powerful you never quite escape it.

[npincus]

33. I'll never forget it.