Joe#3

Joe is realizing that the people in charge of the war, the government, etc., are seeing the future and know that if another war 'needs' to be fought, if Joe shows and tells everyone who and what he is, then no one will fight (or fewer people, anyway). Joe's perception of this is that he needs to point the gun at the people who told him to fight in order to clear them away so he can tell his story and people will listen and believe and war will be less and life will be better. Like we discussed in class, he feels he needs to fight in order to stop fighting.

Joe#2

I agree with what Joe wants; I think it's a good thing to communicate to people what he went through and why it's necessary to have as little war as possible. In a similar situation, I'd want that too. It goes beyond Joe's earlier desire of just talking with someone- he actually wants to communicate his suffering and ideas to others. In a sense, he'll be speaking for the dead (which is almost the name of that one book). I think he's uniquely qualified to do that because like he said earlier in the novel, he is the closest thing to dead and he needs to tell people that life as they know it should not be taken for granted.