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(Image above courtesy http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/o/tim-obrien/nuclear-age.htm)
War has always been a plague on mankind and this plague has always been combatted by people trying to reach the public. Two men have done an excellent job reaching the public by writing anti-war novels. Tim O'Brien, the author of The Nuclear Age, warns the readers of the dangers and destruction that would be caused by a nuclear war. Dalton Trumbo, the author of Johnny Got His Gun, tells the tale of a victim of World War I and warns us of the terrors traditional warfare can bring mankind. Both books carry the same message, that war will lead us to doom and both books share the same story telling method.
In Trumbo's novel, Johnny Got His Gun the reader follows the story of Joe Bonham a young man who received wounds during World War I that left him armless, legless, blind, deaf, and mute. The novel takes place inside of Joe's head and the hospital room that he is in. Through dreams and flashbacks you are told about Joe's life, the events that made him who he is, and got him to where he ended up. In the end of the novel Joe decides to use his body as a testament towards the inhumanity of war, but the idea is shot down and Joe is left in the prison of his mind, neither truly alive or truly dead. The novel ends on a sad note, but with the intention of motivating the reader to be against war.
In O'Brien's novel, The Nuclear Age the reader follows the story of William Cowling. William Cowling becomes perceivably insane when he begins to dig a hole in order to create a bomb shelter to protect his family from an inevitable nuclear war. The story takes place in flashbacks that tell the story of Williams life that led up to his feelings towards nuclear war and how he got to digging his hole. In the end of the novel, William decides to live in his imagination, embracing his inevitable doom, but choosing to ignore it. Much like Johnny Got His Gun the reader feels defeat in the end, but we are suppose to use this awareness to wake other people up, bringing them into actual reality.
The Nuclear Age and Johnny Got His Gun are almost identical in story telling and in the message they want to bring to the world. However, The Nuclear Age delivers a more important message, because we all know about the horrors, but no one acknowledges the bomb anymore. Johnny Got His Gun has existed for 73 years and war still happens, but we have not had a nuclear war yet, nor can we ever afford to have one. The Nuclear Age delivers a stronger message, and in my opinion is a better read. Much like William, we all choose to live in a collective and accepted false reality. In the world we think we live in the bomb only exists as a word that carries no threat. In reality, the bomb is real and it contains absolute extinction. Read The Nuclear Age, it is time to wake up....
