The Naked and the Dead

The Naked and the Dead
by Norman Mailer
read: 2014
Modern Library #51, Guardian 1000 Novels

The Naked and the Dead has both a more limited and a more expansive scope than other war novels I've read. I say "limited" because it doesn't deal with the whole war, but rather one campaign for an island in the South Pacific. I say "expansive" because the story jumps between third-person perspectives, so we see how the war affects the whole platoon, plus General Cummings, Lieutenant Heard, and a other leadership figures in the unit. We see how the men in World War II fight, march, sleep, get letters, fire guns, eat, get medical attention, live, and die. We get glimpses of the decisions Cummings makes and the consequences to the Recon platoon.

There are a few action scenes where Mailer captures the danger and adrenaline of combat, but the bulk of the story is spent in day-to-day affairs. Danger is a fairly uncommon opponent - fatigue, the damp jungle, weakness, uncertainty, and loneliness beset the platoon much more frequently. Compared to what I'm used to from war stories, the novel spends a lot of time dwelling on day-to-day life. Consistent with this theme, the campaign is ultimately won not by some strategic master stroke or feat of individual heroism but because a shell hit a supply depot, resulting in the Japanese army's stores being depleted and their forces nearly starving.

I often think of World War II as a triumph of the Allied powers over the evil, anti-Semitic Nazis, but The Naked and the Dead reminds us that plenty of rank-and-file Americans harbored no love for the Jews. We see this in the blatant anti-Semitism of Gallagher and even Cummings, but also just in the subtler alienation that Goldstein and Roth feel throughout the story. It's an interesting angle.