1)      Trumbo knows “Johnny Got His Gun” will never be a financial success- Trumbo credits the limited success to the fact that during that time period in the US, Americans did not want to see such an involved, non-relaxing (as Trumbo calls it), gruesome film. During such troubling times as the 70’s, which included the Vietnam War, Trumbo believed that Johnny Got His Gun was too much/too relevant/too personal for people to take.

2)      Trumbo compares “Johnny Got His Gun” to a famous work of Art- In his conversation; Trumbo refers to a work by Renoir, “the grand illusion.” This work received no accolades and was in no way highly sought after when it was first produced. Now, it has been encompassed with fame. I don’t think Trumbo is just attempting to show off his Impressionist artist knowledge, but rather he knew that in time his meaning would surface. At face value, Johnny Got His Gun was turned away, but in time Trumbo knew that when the right audience saw it, his message would be clear. It was not made in attempt to glorify war, but rather to deliver home the personal/individual toll it takes on those involved.

3)      Trumbo speaks of his “limited audience”- Trumbo expresses no concern for the limited audience he knew his screenplay would originally reach. He made the book and the characters exactly what he wanted to because, that was the only way to make them. He speaks of how if he were to concern himself with the greater populous, and not his intended audience, the essence of the novel/film would have been lost in the quest. Johnny the main character would have been a combination of so many different individual human aspects, that he would have ended up with no specific message/audience at all. I believe Trumbo refers to those characters as “bastard children.”

Reflection:  When I originally listened to Trumbo speak, he was hard to follow. He speaks with such a flare that is both catchy, and sleep inducing at times. However, there is no question that he is immensely intellectual. Trumbo spoke about writing books about characters, and writing books about ideas. There is a fine separation of the two that I agree upon. A book written of ideas will form characters around the events (or ideas), and the emotions and feelings are drawn from the occurrence of specific events. On the other hand, in character driven stories, the characters develop on a more personal and relatable level to onlookers. A connection can be made easier to a novel that centers itself on a character developing cognitively, emotionally, and or spiritually.

Source of Generated Response:

Dalton Trumbo speaking at UCLA 5/17/1972 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhAXSDpvqVU 

The return of a Soldier to home soil is one of the most jubilant occasions. Caught up in all of the excitement, however, is the harsh reality of that soldier adjusting back into “everyday society.” Combat is not like our daily 9 to 5.

Paul is completely defeated by the end of the novel, psychologically. He speaks consistently of being dark, empty and emotionless. Paul is very aware that the sort of transformations he has endured change veterans in a way that society back home will never comprehend. If he and the other soldiers were allowed years sooner Paul believed “out of the suffering and the strengths of our experiences we might have unleashed a storm” (Remarque, 1929, page 294).  Now the only words Paul can use to describe himself and fellow war comrades are “weary, broken, burnt out, rootless, without hope, and unable to find our way anymore” (Remarque, 1929, page 294). Paul knows his existence is essentially, unnecessary.

All the veterans returning to Germany will be useless in Paul’s eyes. They are needless in their current conditions, older, emotionally distraught, and have no professional skills. What use are they to a progressing society? The only skills they have are blood-thirst, and battlefield survival. WWI vets are basically unessential to anything because they are leftovers of what as once a human. Paul was stripped down and gutted of anything other than just flesh and bone. He had no dreams, no love, no aspirations, no feeling. He just was. The people surrounding Paul would have no idea what it means to see no significance to self-existence or a future. “Let the months and years come, they can take nothing from me, they can take nothing more. I am so alone and so without hope that I can confront them without fear” (Remarque, 1929, page 295). 

check this out!

http://immaculata.mrooms.net/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=101983#p290829

The composition below is a personal reaction to the gas warfare seen on the Bottom of page 67- and Middle of page 69. It tells of Paul’s personal experience during a gas bombing. The introduction of gas warfare in WWI, was something the world had never seen before in human combat.

WWI was the first war to see the use of gas as a weapon. First used by the French, tear gas, it was later picked up by the Germans and made incredibly lethal. Gas was effective, and what is effective gets used. It was cheaper than producing mass amounts of ammunition, and destroyed the enemy in much larger quantities. Either way if the gas didn’t kill the enemy, it scared them out of their trenches so an onslaught of shells could. However, gas warfare was not accredited for its “kill rate” but instead for how it altered the ENTIRE battlefield.

            General John J. Pershing once stated “that gas was a significant weapon, but not as a producer of battle deaths” (Blodgett, page 2, 2009). Gas was more renowned for the difficulties it produced in general combat.  For example: A gas bomb is deployed, gas masks are installed, and all of the sudden having to look through both the gas and the gas mask and fire a weapon, a whole new experience. The thick gaseous air also made communication more difficult. Field commands were unable to be delivered in a trench full of poisonous gas. Even as the enemy adapted to fighting with and within the toxins, the use of gas filled artillery shells developed increasingly high levels of psychological devastation rather than number of kills (Blodgett, page 2, 2009).

            Gas warfare demoralized the enemy. The purpose of many of the attacks was to "surprise, shock, and worry the opponent." Gas attacks often occurred at irregular intervals in the quiet sectors of the front.  These attacks were especially successful as the soldiers who had been sent to these quiet areas to rest, instead found themselves tense and on the alert much of the time (Blodgett, page 3, 2009).

            The article I read in regards to gas warfare in WWI makes a point that is easy to analyze. Chemical weapons are classified as weapons of mass destruction by the United Nations. Their production was then outlawed in 1993 by the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993. As gruesome as it may have seemed to the modern world, the majority of military officials in WWI looked at chemical warfare as “just another hazard that the defenders had to face”. In 1915, anything that would do damage to the opposition was accepted, no limitations. The use of gas warfare should not be belittled, nor exaggerated (Blodgett, page 3, 2009). It was an advancement of the time that changed how enemy forces engaged one another in battle, but ultimately as time moved on was seen as inhumane.

Final Thought:  Quote "There is no app for boots on the ground. Never has been. Never will be!"  

Final Comment:  Human innovation will always drive technology and its advancements that I can say for sure. Whether or not technology will do the job of a soldier someday, I cannot assure anyone. A soldier is one of a country’s most honorable citizens. There is still now and always will be a strong pride in having a military full the country’s own flesh and blood, a real soldier; not a machine. Technology and Humans both make errors, which may be why we use a nice combination of both.  

References

Remarque, E. (1929). All Quiet on the Western Front. New York: Ballantine Books.

Blodgett, B. (2009). Germany’s Use of Chemical Warfare in WWI: First World War. Retrieved from: http://firstworldwar.com/features/chemical_warfare.htm