Johnny Got His Gun

"He was a dead man with a mind that could still think. He knew all the answers that the dead knew and couldn't think about. He could speak for the dead because he was one of them. He was the first of all the soldiers who had died since the beginning of time who still had a brain left to think with."

Dalton Trumbo's 1939 anti-war novel titled "Johnny Got His Gun" tells the story of a soldier who gets hit by a mortar shell during battle. The soldier wakes up in a hospital bed and realizes that he has lost both arms, both legs, his entire face and jaw, and both ears.

In anatomy class today we discussed the three general functions of the nervous system: sensation, integration, and response. In this story, the protagonist has retained the integration (thinking, feeling, learning, perceiving) function, but is limited in the other two. Because of this, he is trapped in his own body and has to learn new ways to sense and respond to what's going on around him.

This novel was made into a movie (never seen it, sorry). It was also the inspiration for Metallica's song One.