Against Regulations

Joe has finally been heard. In this chapter, Joe gets a new nurse. When she comes in she unbuttons his shirt and traces “Merry Christmas” on his chest. He nods that he understands, and Joe and the nurse start to communicate by head nods on Joe’s part. The woman goes off to get someone who knows Morse code, and when she comes back with a man, all he codes is, “What do you want?”
Joe is really taken aback by this question. Well, of course whatever material object they give him he would have no use for. And the only thing that he wants is his arms and legs back, but the man knows that is impossible, so Joe thinks the question was mean and cruel.
We already know how anti-war Joe is, so he decides to be used as an educational tool. He wants to be shown as an example of how bad war is. He wants to bring the war to people and show them how gruesome it is, and what they are really fighting for. Joe wants to show everyone his body because he wants to spread awareness about the war that most people don’t know because they don’t hear about it in newspapers.
The man leaves and then comes back and says that what Joe wants is against regulations. Joe doesn’t know why they would deny him something so important to a man in his condition, but then he realizes that it isn’t really “against regulations.”
They just want to hide him. They want him to be a body that they are keeping alive, but they don’t want him to be a person. They don’t want him to think for himself. At the end, they are sedating him again and they won’t let him communicate anymore.
Joe wanted to show people how bad war is, and they want to hide the truth. If men knew about Joe, they wouldn’t want to be in the war.