The story of Dalton Trumbo & this pacifist classic is as entertaining as anything he ever wrote. After the Stalin-Hitler Nonaggression pact was signed, doctrinaire communists like Trumbo were ordered to oppose US entry into the war; the Nazis were suddenly allies of the Communists. So Trumbo penned this seemingly impassioned anti-war diatribe. However, as soon as Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, Party members were commanded to advocate immediate American intervention, so with Trumbo's connivance the book disappeared from print. Meanwhile, isolationists praised the book and tried getting Trumbo to join their movement. He not only refused them, he also turned their names over to the FBI. Once the war ended, the FBI & Congress belatedly turned their attention to the domestic Communist menace and Trumbo ended up being a member of the Hollywood Ten, when he refused to name fellow Party members in a fit of ne found moral virginity. Additionally, with America once again fighting against Communists, this time in Southeast Asia, Trumbo suddenly rediscovered the value of his novel and it returned to print. One hardly expects elevated levels of morality from a Communist, but the cynicism displayed by Trumbo was truly breathtaking. The book itself is the story of a young American soldier of WWI awakening in a hospital and gradually realizing that he's lost his arms, legs, face, eyes and hearing. Trapped within the shell of his body, he flashes back to earlier scenes in his life and ruminates on why he ever marched off to war in the first place. The entire novel's viewpoint can be summed up in this extended passage: He thought here you are Joe Bonham lying like a side of beef all the rest of your life and for what? Somebody tapped you on the shoulder and said come along son we're going to war. So you went.Finally though, he is assigned a nurse who understands that he is tapping out Morse code with his head. His hopes soar as he imagines being released from the Hospital. But the doctors inform him that regulations forbid his release and he realizes that they can't allow the public to see him. He is the dirty little secret product of war: And then suddenly he saw. He had a vision of himself as a new kind of Christ as a man who carries within himself all the seeds of a new order of things. He was the new messiah of the battlefields saying to people as I am so shall you be. For he had seen the future he had tasted it and now he was living it. He had seen the airplanes flying in the sky he had seen the skies of the future filled with them black with them and now he saw the horror beneath. He saw a world of lovers forever parted of dreams never consummated of plans that never turned into reality. He saw a world of dead fathers and crippled brothers and crazy screaming sons. He saw a world of armless mothers clasping headless babies to their breasts trying to scream out their grief from throats that were cancerous with gas. He saw starved cities black and cold and motionless and the only things in this whole dead terrible world that made a move or a sound were the airplanes that blackened the sky and far off against the horizon the thunder of the big guns and the puffs that rose from barren tortured earth when their shells exploded.Trumbo's audacity here is astounding, but his argument is inept and his metaphor inapt. First, the metaphor of this dying soldier as the new Christ bringing the message that nothing is worth dying for, is simply asinine. Christ, of course, is humankind's prime example of the belief that some things are worth sacrificing your own life. Second, consider Trumbo's argument even briefly, and you will quickly perceive that it is internally inconsistent. If nothing is worth dying for then warfare makes perfect sense. When a malicious power attacks, you had better fight back or you will be dead. & nothing's worth dying for... Doesn't exactly hold together does it? This is not actually even pacifism. On the contrary, the true pacifist believes that there is nothing worth killing for. You can't control the actions of others, only your own actions. You must decide not to take life, even at the expense of your own. I disagree with this, but it is a valid philosophy and many pacifists have shown extraordinary courage--Quakers who went to prison rather than go to war and Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights activists come to mind. This form of pacifism is noble and honorable, even if it is dangerous. On the other hand, what Trumbo is really espousing is a slave philosophy. Carried to its logical conclusion, his argument is a call for men to cede freedom and submit to enslavement in order to preserve their own lives. But of what value is such a life? Thankfully, Trumbo and his Communist cohorts were defeated and we never had to find out. Ultimately, this book is more interesting as a justification for the Blacklist, than as a statement about war. (Reviewed:) Grade: (F) Tweet Websites:See also:WarLibrary Journal: Top 150 of the Century Mr. Doggett's Suggested Summer Reading for Students National Book Award Winners San Francisco Chronicle Top 100 Novels of the West -Johnny Got His Gun Links -Dalton Trumbo (1905-1976) -The Literature & Culture of the American 1950s -Who Killed Spartacus? How Studio Censorship Nearly Ruined the Braveheart of the 1960's -The Hollywood Ten's 50th Birthday Commie Dearest (Heterodoxy, K.L. Billingsley) -National Book Award Comments:Trumbo was under Communist Party discipline when he wrote the book. It was propaganda for the Comintern's policy at the time. Those who who don't have the historical knowledge to understand what that means should read Whittaker Chamber's biography, Witness. - steve - Oct-05-2008, 12:20 ******************************************************* The passage that should have been quoted was the one about what goes through a soldier's mind as he dies. That was about as poignant a bit of writing as I've ever seen. I was disappointed with the way Trumbo changed Bonham from a consummately isolated individual into a "we" in the final chapter. I guess Bonham was intended to be an everyman, but collectivization robs one of his identity. I have never become engrossed in a book like I did in this telling of Bonham's story. - Robert D. - Aug-09-2005, 17:29 ******************************************************* You have completely missed the point of the book. WWI was a senseless loss of life. All who fought in WWI have my utmost respect and Lest We Forget the dead. Trumbo is protesting a senseless loss of life, not the defence of freedom. This can be seen when he admits in teh foreword that he is glad the book went out of print during WWII as it was not a romantic war and Hitler had to be stopped. You need to look deeper than just slamming Communism to make an hoesnt judgement of this book. - andrew - Jun-05-2005, 02:15 ******************************************************* So everyone that is saying this review is bad... a link to a good article would be helpful for people in the future. - nublet - May-03-2005, 23:47 ******************************************************* I just read this book for school and did research on Dalton Trumbo as well. I also see no book review. I see a rant about communism. Which is fine because really communisms not a terrific idea. But the background is sketchy and missing quite a few facts and has some facts that are completely mixed up. For research purposes this review was very unhelpful. - Kelsey - Apr-07-2005, 14:48 ******************************************************* I don't see an actual book review. The reviewer gives a little background information on the author, which, by the way, is very sketchy, and then he quotes a passage from the book. None of this constitutes a review. - E. Parker - Oct-27-2004, 10:25 ******************************************************* |
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