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.
Background
Historical Context: World War I
The First World War broke out on July 28th, 1914, and endured for four long years until a truce was finally declared on November 11th, 1918—a date that would later become an annual commemorative event known as Armistice Day, or Remembrance Day. The war was fought between two sets of allies: the Triple Entente (France, Russia, and Britain) and the Triple Alliance (Germany, Italy, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire), all of which were major European powers with vast territories and resources at their disposal.
While there had of course been countless armed conflicts before throughout history, this conflict became known as the First World War due to its truly global scale and its staggering death count: estimates of the total military and civilian death count often exceed 10 million, with tens of millions more injured, missing in action, or otherwise affected by the conflict. The war also saw major developments in military technology, such as the use of chemical weapons—especially the infamous “mustard gas” that could blind and suffocate soldiers caught on the battlefield without a gas mask—and aerial bombardment. The war is also infamous for its “trench warfare,” in which opposing forces spent much of their time living and fighting from a long series of deep ditches (or trenches) that usually left the soldiers exposed to the elements and living in deeply unhygienic conditions.
Dalton Trumbo wrote Johnny Got His Gun as a response to the unprecedented horrors of the First World War, which he regarded as cruel and unjust in both its imperialistic motivations and in the tremendous loss of life that followed. The novel’s title is an ironic play on the slogan of a series of famous army posters urging, “Johnny, get your gun!” to encourage young men to enlist. In titling his novel Johnny Got His Gun, Trumbo immediately draws attention to what the results are of following such orders: the mental and physical trauma of innocent soldiers like Joe.
Authorial Context: Dalton Trumbo
Dalton Trumbo was born on December 9th, 1905, in the American state of Colorado. He came from a modest background and received a standard public-school education while growing up. From 1924-1925 he attended the University of Colorado and dabbled in various forms of writing. His studies in Colorado were cut short when his family relocated to California and his father died shortly afterwards, leading Trumbo to take up a variety of jobs to help support his family. Trumbo worked while continuing to pursue his education at the University of California, with some of his work experiences—including a stint in a Los Angeles bakery—serving as later inspiration for Joe’s pre-war life in Johnny Got His Gun.
Recognition as a writer was hard-won for Trumbo. He wrote numerous novels and stories during his studies, only to face repeated rejection from publishers and magazines. In the 1930s his luck began to change, as Trumbo began to successfully contribute articles to magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post. His first published novel appeared in 1935. In 1939, Johnny Got His Gun brought him wider public attention and considerable critical acclaim, winning a National Book Award.
Trumbo’s relationship with Johnny Got His Gun became complicated during the course of World War II. While Trumbo had written his famous anti-war novel in response to the horrors of World War I, he supported the fight against Nazi Germany, arguing that World War II was a far more justified and essential conflict. He voluntary asked his publisher to suspend printing further editions of the novel until after the war’s end.
During the 1930s and 1940s Trumbo enjoyed major success as a screenwriter and was even nominated for an Academy Award for his screenwriting. However, after World War II ended, Trumbo became famous as one of the Hollywood figures blacklisted by the House Un-American Activities Committee, which tried to force him to testify against supposed Communist sympathizers in Hollywood. Trumbo’s refusal to cooperate led to his conviction on the charge of Contempt of Congress. He was blacklisted from working in Hollywood and was imprisoned for nearly a year in a Kentucky prison in 1950. Trumbo continued to write screenplays, which appeared attributed to other names to evade the blacklist. Trumbo secretly wrote screenplays for such famous films as Spartacus (1960) and Roman Holiday (1953), although he only received full credit for these achievements after the blacklist was lifted.
In 1971, Trumbo wrote and directed a film adaptation of Johnny Got His Gun, which had found newfound relevance in the wake of the United States’ disastrous war experiences in Vietnam. Trumbo continued writing screenplays until his death on September 10th, 1976, at the age of 70.
