Johnny Got His Gun

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In the excerpt from Johnny Got His Gun, the author demonstrates the distancing relationship between a father and his son by using point of view, selection of detail and syntax. The point of view in the except is Third-Person Limited with a hint of second person in the beginning, “When you slept inside the tent it seemed always raining outside because the needles from the pine kept falling.” Turns into “Each summer they came to this place which was nine thousand feet high and covered with pine trees and dotted with lakes.” The switch helps the reader feel what the father and son experience while still holding on to the outside perspective. The Third-Person point of view helps to give off a sort of mystery to the story. We only seem to know the son’s mental anguish over telling his father that he wants to ‘hang out’ with someone else. The uses of selection of detail in the story suggests that this period of time is when things are changing. The fact that it’s the 15th summer for the boy and it’s the 8th time he’s been out with his father, shows that they have bonded and the boy is finally letting go. Being 15 for a young man is really pivotal for his development and he might steer away from his parents in the beginning. Then at the end of the excerpt, Bill and the son leave to go fishing without waking up the father, that would seem like nothing, but it is the fact that they didn’t awaken the father to let him know what was going on. This is the falling relationship between a son who always looked at his father as a role model but now wants someone knew to look at…simply because he feels as if there is something more this person could teach him. The syntax demonstrates the order of growth. The son at first seems to want to stay with the same old routine as always but finally breaks and tells his father that he wants a change. The father is skeptical at first

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