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Johnny Got His Gun is by Dalton Thumbs. The main character is Joe Bonham. He went to war in the 1917. While there he got his arms, legs, and face blown up; he was a living piece of meat.
The doctors thought that there was no feeling, no thought in his body. However, they were wrong, but they let him live with no sense of time and not being able to see, hear, speak, smell, or even touch without it being on his chest. The right of living is a privilege to many, but being hooked up to machines to live and survive is not living but, in a way, dying. Without the means of being able to perform everyday functions, and not being able to tell the difference between dreams and reality, Joe has many dreams that he believes to be real. He sees the face of Jesus, who gives him advice on how to tell and know the difference between reality and his dreams. However, Johnny is talking to himself and trying to make peace with himself, about which reality is real.
The nurse later finds out that Joe does have feeling and real thoughts. She helps him in many ways. She opens the window to give him a sense of days and nights. She speaks to him through writing on his chest. It may have given him a sense of peace and a glimpse into reality, because of the nurse, but he still can not perform everyday functions. The doctors finally come in and discover what they have done: preserve a living, knowing being.
When they realized he could talk through Morse code from his head, they came to reality of what the horrors of modern medicine could bring to life, or for that matter keep alive, no matter how torn apart the body is because of wonderment. Joe can not speak to enforce what he wants done with his life, because the doctors realize that he is their creation and he should be locked up from the outside world. They deny him the right of his arms, legs and his sense of perception to the world. He could not use his arms to itch, he could not brush off a rodent or insect if crawling on him, and he could not express his feelings of love, fear, or his anxiety of being a living piece of meat. He was denied walking and running. However, all this was not as bad as the most important, which is the will to live or die.
The doctors took away that right when Joe had requested death, after being denied his dream of being in a Freak Show. They closed his dreams, his thoughts, and his perception of time when they forced him to live. The nurse was willing, however, to kill him, to help him die so he could live without the pain and agony of not dying in many years, when he gets old and gray. They took away a mans will to survive though technology in medicine.
And they took away the right he had to freely die because of an experiment that they thought would prove to be a good test or how to keep the meat alive on isolation and anger of the outside world.
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Research essay sample on Perform Everyday Functions Living Piece Of Meat Live
