Final Book Blog

Though I disagreed with his idea that there is no idea worth dying for, I still found the book to be very good and one of the better books we had read this year. Throughout the piece I had felt a sense of pity for him that would surge at certain points such as when he was constantly sedated to calm him down or when he was denied his ability to leave the hospital. I agreed with his final idea that if the entity pretending to protect your freedoms is actually distracting them then you should rebel but I also found it very curious because it forced a further analysis of any conflict the nation has entered in. You are forced to look and see if the fight was really necessary or if the nation had somehow taken away some of your rights in the name of that conflict. Though his initial idea was one that i disagreed with, in the end his conclusion was one that is hard to refute.

Something Interesting, blog for Tuesday

I found the slow progression of his realization about the full extent of his injuries to be interesting because it mirrored the slow formation of his opinions about the war and its effects upon him and his generation. As he realized how truly injured he was, he began to form a more concrete opinion about the war until he had decided it was a war that had forced many unwilling combatants to sacrifice their lives for what the “high up” people had deemed a worthy cause, but a cause that the true combatants felt no connection to. On another level, as he steadily became more aware of his increasingly worsening state, his opinions became more and more pessimistic. This led to him coming to the ultimately brutal conclusion that nothing was worth truly giving your life for because you would never be able to experience what you sacrificed for, a conclusion a man filled with depression could only draw. It seems to me that this would indicate the fact that Joe held no true love for anyone, because that is where a comparison to such a sacrifice can truly be drawn. Mothers say they will sacrifice themselves for their children. Loved ones will sacrifice for each other. If he views nothing as being worth a sacrifice then he never truly loved anything, making him a little less believable as a character.

March of the Flag

In The March of the Flag, the idea is given forth that the Philippines should be taken for a multitude of reasons. This includes the fact that it is a God given ideal that the United States should spread its influence as far as possible (manifest destiny) and that the United States should force its government on the Philippines because the Filipinos are incapable of governing themselves, just as a child is incapable of truly controlling himself. One of the primary reasons, however, is purely economical. He wants the natural resources the Philippines have to offer. These ideals would not sit well with Joe because, while he has the idea that nothing is truly worth dying for, these ideas are purely material. While I believe that there are some things worth dying for, none of these material reasons fall into that category, and Joe would find this idea even more repulsive and would view the author as one of the “them” who sent his generation off to die for mere money.

Johnny Got His Gun vs. America The Beautiful

In “Johnny Got His Gun”, Joe comes to the rather premature idea that there is nothing worth dying for because you cannot possibly experience that which you made the ultimate sacrifice for. This pokes a hole in the ideas put forth in “America the Beautiful” where D’Souza states that in order for a war to be won, people must believe deeply in the war and be willing to sacrifice greatly for it. I will not say these ideas clash, for they do not. D’Souza is not saying every cause is worth sacrificing everything for (which would go against Joe), but rather that for a fight to be victorious people must be willing to do so. I find myself fundamentally disagreeing with Joe’s conclusion. Not only can this not be applied on a large scale because Joe is a single individual but also because there are so many examples pointing in the other direction. For example, Harry’s mom sacrifices herself to try and help Harry survive Voldemort’s attacks, showing her willingness to make the ultimate sacrifice, directly clashing with Joe. No but really, on a serious level, if people didn’t think there were issues worth dying for then no one would sign up for the military. No one would act as a suicide bomber. No one would sacrifice their life for another’s. Joe’s view, while understandable due to his predicament, is a rather premature idea that would be hard to apply globally.