The Naked and The Dead

The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer is a massive book about the invasion of a Pacific island by American troops in World War II. Despite the size of the book, Mailer proves to be quite adept at moving the story along (even though it took me forever to finish the book...I actually finished a few days ago).

The book focuses on one particular platoon, which is nominally led by Sergeant Croft. At times the story broadens out to examine the commanding general, Cummings, and his staff of officers. But Croft's platoon, the grunts, are the main characters in the book. And boy are there a lot of characters. Too many perhaps. But the characters are one of the things that make this book great. Wilson, Roth, Goldstein, Martinez, Ridges, Red, Brown, Stanley, Gallagher, and more and more. These are men that you feel like you live with in the book. You live through the terror of landing on the beach, the boredom of camp life, the fear of the firefight, the fear of the jungle, and to a large degree, fear of failing your buddies and fear of their derision. Mailer uses flashbacks in sections titled "Time Machine" that give you the story of a soldier's life before the war. These men come from such disparate backgrounds that you'd think it impossible for them to work together as a unit. The Farmer, the Irish low level political machine operative, the redneck, the Mexican-American, two very different Jews, the stoic Texan...many different walks of life came together during the conscription draft for WWII. In the previous sentence I categorized these men in just a general word or two. This is really a failure on my part. I've often talked about character development in other reviews, but I wonder if Mailer can be topped. You understand each of these men as extremely complex individuals, each with their own many flaws and strengths. The only way I can really describe it is that these characters come as close to being real people as in any piece of fiction I've ever read. For that matter, they come off as more real that some actual people written about in non-fiction.

Perhaps the next most impressive thing about the book is the description of the war on the island. Despite having read many books about war before, I don't recall ever reading such an un-sanitized depiction of war. The way Mailer describes mortar and artillery attacks can actually make you break out in a sweat. I was terrified and gratified to find soldiers in the book having reactions like I think I would have in that situation. While the artillery rounds come in, you have men cowering in their foxholes, ears ringing from the constant barrage, pounding the ground and screaming "stop it, stop it, stop it." In instances like this, it really put a human face on war for me. Other instances included a character defecating in his pants during an attack out of sheer terror. Something you never hear about, but something you know happened. And further on the excretory front, you normally don't hear about characters moving their bowels, let alone having diarrhea. If you do, it's normally in a comic context. In The Naked and the Dead, going off in the tall kunai grass when nature calls can get you killed. Speaking of the kunai grass, the book brings home the fact that the environment, as much as the Japanese, was the enemy. Jungle sores all over your skin, feet constantly soaked in water, brain baking in the direct sun, feet slipping in the mud, or mountain crevasses that are nearly impossible to pass. Unlike baseball, war isn't called off because of rain. And yet, despite all this, the characters in the book carried on and did their duty to the best of their ability. Mailer gets into the heads and explains their motivations, and you understand why they literally soldier on, but you're left wondering if you could have done half of what they did given the circumstances.

Even more frightening is the suddenness of death in the book (in some instances). A patrol would be going on just like normal. Nothing special would be happening, then bam...a character you've grown to know (over many pages) is dead. No rhyme, no reason...just dead. But that is how it happens in a war zone. For example: "Quite naturally, he assumed the point and led the platoon toward the pass. Half an hour later, [X] was killed by a machine gun bullet which passed through his chest." That's it. About 100 or so pages spent getting to know the character, and then he's ripped from you in less than 20 words. Sudden, stupid, and cruel.

Finally, I want to touch on Mailer's use of the language. The man was a true virtuoso. If nowhere else, you can see this in the contrast between the language in the dialogue and the language of the narrator. The narrator uses complex sentences and draws amazing pictures with words. The characters use the vernacular of the day and Mailer makes only one concession for propriety's sake; the soldiers say "fug" instead of saying "fuck." And their speech is peppered with fug's. We don't like to think our grandfathers would have talked that way, but indeed they did. Further, Mailer seems to catch the dialect of each character just right. Again this is something that really helps make these characters fully recognized.

In closing, I suspect I've found my heavyweight champion for this reading project (and I'm not talking just about the weight of the physical book!). Even though it took me an awfully long time to read it, it's stunningly superb work. I know that we don't have the attention span these days, but I think every kid who's thinking about joining the service should read this book first, just so he has a broader perspective of what he/she might be getting into.