Joe’s mask, which covers the horrible injuries sustained upon his face, is one of the novel’s most important symbols. The mask represents both the extent of Joe’s physical trauma and the desire of the military and medical establishments to hide the truth of what happens to soldiers like Joe.

Joe recognizes the mask as something dehumanizing, in that it obscures what is left of his identity and minimizes the injuries he has suffered. He reflects upon how the mask conceals the truth of his state “so that the nurse in her comings and goings wouldn’t vomit at the sight of her patient” (90). Knowing that the nurse might feel physically ill at the sight of his unmasked face reminds Joe of how disfigured he has become, as well as how invested the authorities are in making his disfigurement hard to see. Joe realizes just how important the mask is as a means of military control when, during his unsuccessful period of tapping, he reflects that no one looking at him would suspect that “beneath the mask [. . .] there lay insanity as naked and cruel and desperate as insanity could be” (188). He defines this insanity as “the desire to beat against living skulls until they were pulp [.