Martyrdom

Will Landschulz
Am Lit Per. 2
Mrs. LaMagdeleine

Joe has now been denied the chance to tell his story.  As such, the only recourse left to him is rant to himself (and, by extension, his audience behind the fourth wall) about how injust it is that noone gets to see his mangled body, which he refers to as the future.  If only they saw his body, then nobody would volunteer for the army, nobody would obey the draft, nobody would go to war.  What Joe realizes is that if the state of his body gets out, then there goes the grand majority of the United States' power.  What he doesn't realize is that if he gets over his own despair and thinks, then he can easily ask for photographers to come in, and do an exposé on him.  That way, it would probably get farther than if he was a traveling exhibit, and he wouldn't be breaking regulations at all.  Despite this, he whines about how he's a "new kind of Jesus" that is denied the chance to rise again.  I think he is a martyr, but he started as an unwilling one that grew into accepting martyrdom.