Dalton Trumbo is perhaps best known for his communist views, for his involvement in the HUAC committee in Hollywood, and for his work in the film industry. However, Trumbo's novels are widely considered to be among his best works. In one of these esteemed and probably best-known novels, Johnny Got His Gun, Dalton Trumbo uses a third-person point of view and a stream of near-conscious syntax to characterize the exceptionally complex and changing relationship between the young man and his father. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Trumpo's book is structured in an exceptionally unique way. The most striking aspect of its structure is Trumbo's extensive use of flashback. The passage about the main character's fishing trip with his father is an example of Trumbo's use of flashback, as it is written in a reflective point of view of the young man camping with his father and his friend. “They had been coming here since he was seven,” Trumbo said. “Now he was fifteen and Bill Harper was coming tomorrow...Tomorrow, for the first time in all our trips together, he wanted to go fishing with someone other than him. his father (Trumbo). While the third person point of view isolates the reader from the situation somewhat, it also makes it more interesting in that it highlights how revolutionary the situation is in their relationship. In other words, the third-person point of view amplifies the fact that the boy is growing up and breaking away from the once close relationship he and his father once had. The use of the third-person point of view also highlights a striking generational gap between father and son. On the one hand, the son wants to wake up “early in the morning” to go “fishing” with his friend Bill Harper. On the other hand, his father, presumably old, tired and somewhat boring, "doesn't want to go fishing" because he is tired and "[is] going to rest all day" (Trumbo). Not only does the point of view highlight a generational difference, it also characterizes the changing nature of their relationship. That is, they were once best friends who did everything together, but now they are drifting apart as the boy grows up and becomes his own person, no longer needing the once invaluable support and attention of his doting father. Additionally, Trumbo uses stream-of-consciousness-like syntax to characterize the evolving relationship between father and son. This is especially evident when Trumbo says, “For a while his father didn't say anything. Then he said why accompany Joe... A little later [he asked if] Bill Harper [has] a yard? to which the son replied that Bill didn't have a cane (Trumbo). The boy's father in turn told his son to "take my rod and let Bill use yours" because he was not going fishing with them and therefore had no use for it (Trumbo). The fact that the boy's father gives his son his precious staff, the "only extravagance his father has had in his entire life", is a kind of symbolic passing of the torch between father and son (Trumbo). In other words, the pole is a symbol of both the son's newfound independence and freedom and the changing nature of the relationship between father and son (from loving and almost mutualistic to loving but independent). Likewise, Trumbo's use of such rapid, consciousness-like syntax, during which the boy's fishing trip is described at the end of the passage, emphasizes the boy's happiness at his new freedom.