Analysis Of Johnny Got His Gun By Dalton Trumbo

In Johnny Got His Gun, author Dalton Trumbo describes the relationship between a young man named Joe, and his father. Trumbo uses several reading strategies to do so, but the most prominent ones displayed are the usage of point of view, selection of detail, and syntax. Utilizing all three of these techniques is what makes a relationship between father and son so vivid and demonstrates how strong and trusting the relationship is. Firstly, Dalton Trumbo uses point of view to depict Joe’s relationship with his father. In paragraph two, Joe is nervous about how to tell his dad something- “[wondering] just how he was going to tell him” (15-16). This itself already tells the reader that Joe already values his father’s opinion or replies to him. After telling him that he does not want to fish with someone else, his father “didn’t say a thing” (35). His father’s silence shows just how important fishing with his son was to him, and although he does allow him to go, there is a twinge of sadness in him. The “little lump in [Joe’s] throat” shows that Joe feels

From line one of the passage, the setting is clear. The author describes a campsite with a “campfire… built in front of a tent”, (1) and that “when you slept inside the tent it always seemed that it was raining...because [pine needles] kept falling.” (4-5) Setting aside, Trumbo describes how Joe and his father always fished together, and that before this trip, “the idea [of fishing with someone else] had never occurred to him.” (19-20) This detail shows that Joe and his father had always had a tight relationship; he had never even considered fishing with any alternative to his dad. And when he does ask his dad, and he approves, but says that Joe can “take [his] rod and let Bill use [his]” (38). His father is selfless enough to allow him to borrow his fishing rod, despite his disappointment of not going fishing with his