He had to stop the fear that made him want to yell and holler and laugh and claw himself to death with a pair of hands that were rotting in some hospital dump. He had to stop the smotherings and the sinkings and the risings. He had to stop things from fading away and then rushing back at him.

Sometimes, when Joe is panicky, he'll repeat things over and over again in order to get hold of himself:

The thoughts and images all just kind run together (willow trees, anyone?), but we can figure out what's going on, because we've been anxious and had run-on thoughts like that, too. Take a look at this doozy, for example: 'He's still got air and he's not struggling and he's got willow trees and he can think and he's not in pain' (5.10). Guess what? That's just the way Joe thinks- especially, when he's anxious, which is pretty often. Now, we don't always think in complete sentences, right? Sometimes, we just think in words or sound or images, all pretty loosely connected. Here's how it works: a writer tries to mimic on the page the way a person thinks and the ways that words and thoughts are associated when a person thinks. Stream-of-consciousness was a technique associated with the Modernist movement at the beginning of the 20th century. While he might not use any words that will send you running to a dictionary, his insistence on mimicking the language of an average Joe (especially when that average Joe can't speak and is confined to thought alone) means that Joe often thinks in sentences that run together or that are only punctuated by exclamations of 'O Jesus Christ.' 139-49.No, Dalton Trumbo isn't missing the punctuation keys on his typewriter. “As Crippled As It Gets: Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun (1939 1971). The fact that the book tells the story from the perspective of this soldier who is unable to communicate with the outside world, yet is still so engaging and deals with such important topics is a, is a testament to the skill of Trumbo as a novelist and the power of the novel itself. In order to most accurately depict Joe’s struggles, Trumbo chooses the “narrative perspective of a subjective personal narrator drifting in and out–at times in a kind of stream of consciousness fashion–of his ordinary reality, oscillating between actual events happening in and around his bed and his memories and fantasies” (Pospíšil 141). Yet, he still retains all conscious functions. He is, in all aspects, immobile and unable to communicate with the outside word.

His name is Joe and his legs, arms, and the frontside of his face have been blown off. The novel centers around an American soldier who has been severley wounded in the first World War. The novel Johnny Got His Gun (1939), by Dalton Trumbo, is a clear example of how the narrative voice in the novel has been used in unique ways.

Johnny got his gun by dalton trumbo