"Johnny Got His Gun"
 

Has anyone here heard of it? my parents just got it for me yesterday, and it's really heartbreaking. It's about a guy in his late teens to mid 20's who gets drafted into a war and ends up stepping on a landmine, or getting hit by a bomb, and loses all of his senses (excluding only touch) and loses his arms and legs. He's then put in an army prison and declared MIA since no one can recognize him. He's kept alive through a feeding tube. The rest of the book deals with him thinking about war, and his own bodily prison and his lonliness. It's a really really anti-war book. This passage acctually made me cry:

"They died crying in their minds like little babies. They forgot the thing they were fighting for the things they were dying for. They thought about things a man can understand. they died yearning for the face of a friend. they died whimpering for the voice of a mother a father a wife a child. They died with their hearts sick for one more look at the place where they were born please God just one more look. They died moaning and sighing for life. They knew what was important. They knew life was everything and they died with screams and sobs. They died with only one thought in their minds and that was i want to live i want to live."

Anyways, if you read it, what do you think about it, or the ideas expressed in it?

Well "I" haven't personal read the book, my friends has =].
But we're really close so he used to talk about it all the time.

And one of my favorite bands made a music video with scenes from the movie that was inspired by the book, =].

The song was One By Metallica, the music video shows bits and pieces of the movie, and it is sad =[.

Born on the 4th of July
No one more loyal than I
When my country said so
I was ready to go
And I wish I had been left there to die.


Tom Paxton

Metallica - One Lyrics


I can't remember anything,
Can't tell if this is true or dream,
Deep down inside I feel to scream,
This terrible silence stops it there

Now that the war is through with me,
I'm waking up, I cannot see,
That there's not much left of me,
Nothing is real but pain now

Hold my breath as I wish for death,
Oh please God, wake me

Back in the womb it's much too real,
In pumps life that I must feel,
But can't look forward to reveal,
Look to the time when I'll live

Fed through the tube that sticks in me,
Just like a wartime novelty,
Tied to machines that make me be,
Cut this life off from me

Hold my breath as I wish for death,
Oh please God, wake me

Now the world is gone I'm just one,
Oh God, help me hold my breath as I wish for death,
Oh please God, help me

Darkness, imprisoning me,
All that I see,
Absolute horror,
I cannot live,
I cannot die,
Trapped in myself,
Body my holding cell

Landmine, Has taken my sight,
Taken my speech,
Taken my hearing,
Taken my arms,
Taken my legs,
Taken my soul,
Left me with life in hell