Johnny Got His Gun

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AP Essay "Johnny Got His Gun" This passage from Johnny Got His Gun describes the close relatioship between a father and his son. The passage shows the desire and importance of a son's right of passage in growing up. The author shows the dedication between a father and son and the struggle that the son feels in breaking away. The son is beginning to feel the need to branch out as most do during adolescence. The passage shows the difficulty in achieving this goal and in finding the right time to do it. The story is written in third person but has a closer look into the mind of the son. The passage looks at his feelings towards his father. It follows his emotions and the effect that the situations have on him. There is an obvious dedication between the two. The author uses careful selection of details to illustrate the apparent relationship between them. The details make it seem as if the father and son always got along and were always most important to each other, above all else. The father and son both preferred the company of each other over the company of outsiders. Despite this the son desires to break away and start a life as a normal, social teenager. The point of the passage is to show the difficulty that he experiences because of that. The author uses a unique syntax. There are little to no sentences containing commas. The sentances are not always short, but are generally to the point. The author also used a description of the pair's tradition to foreshadow the upcoming events. In the passage, he immediately describes the area in the woods where they're staying together. The line "Sitting across from him and staring into the fire was his father." shows a sense of distance between the two. It's as if the father feels what's coming and is contemplating it. The tension between the two was growing. "He sat in front of the fire and
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