Johnny Got His Gun

Joe continues his tapping with no response from the nurses. He begins to think that he is going insane, and that his nurse, by refusing to comprehend his efforts, is “keeping [him] a prisoner” (189), which leads him in turn to think about all the “little guys” (189) throughout history who have been imprisoned and their suffering. He considers the Carthaginian slaves who were blinded, the Roman slaves who were forced to fight each other in the Colosseum and the Egyptian slaves who were forced to build the pyramids. Joe considers himself to be like them as he too was taken away from his home without his consent, then effectively imprisoned within his own body. Joe believes his situation is even worse because his cell is smaller, and he is not allowed to die. He then senses, from the heavy vibrations on the floor, that a man has entered his room. The man is a doctor. The doctor injects him with morphine to stop him from tapping, and Joe feels himself drifting off to sleep.

At first, Joe’s experience of being on morphine is one of extreme tranquility where “it seemed that he was relaxing in every muscle of his body relaxing in his brain” (194).