Book Review

The Naked and the Dead

by Norman Mailer

     Readers expecting Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead will, almost inevitably, be disappointed if they expect it to be a conventional war novel. It is not a story of combat operations, gritty heroism, tough guy fearlessness in the face of danger, or a patriotic celebration of American greatness. Instead, World War II functions as a setting for portraying the lives of the men who enlisted and fought. Going into this sprawling novel with the right expectations will make it a more meaningful reading experience.

     Mailer was heavily influenced by Marxist thought in his younger days and this shows in his treatment of the army; there is no lead character and in the forefront of the writing are the men who make up a platoon of recon soldiers sent to invade a fictional Filipino island called Atopopei. After landing on the shore, they build a bivouac, do menial chores, engage in some minor combat, and get to know each other as they do a lot of waiting. Rather than portraying the army as a conglomeration of faceless troops who march to any orders they receive, Mailer makes each one an individual with their own hopes, fears, dreams, anxieties, and individual personalities. We are reminded that each soldier is a human being. Many of these men are uneducated, lower class, and only once or twice removed from the lumpenproletariat. They are not magnanimous superheroes of combat; they are ordinary people that would probably be considered mediocre by most people’s standards. But they are still men and despite their flaws, offensive habits, and lack of ambition, Mailer does not want us to forget that. Most of the novel is dedicated to building them up as characters. Just as Melville described all the intricate aspects of whaling in Moby Dick so the reader could easily visualize what was happening during the final hunt, Mailer thoroughly acquaints us with the inner workings of each character’s mind so we can make sense of how they react during the fruitless detail they get assigned in the end.

     Another Marxist theme that permeates The Naked and the Dead is that of class conflict. While the lower ranking soldiers are crude and uncouth, the officers they despise are painted in unflattering colors. The Texan Croft acts as the sergeant leading the platoon; he is a sadist and a psychopath. His desire is to get promoted but, a lot like Captain Ahab, he leads them on a mission that is futile and insists on carrying it through even when it is obvious they need to stop. Croft is incapable as seeing other people as people and Mailer exemplifies him as the type of leader the American military depends on.

     What little plot there is revolves around the relationship between Lieutenant Hearne and General Cummings. Hearne is a white, upper-class liberal with a wishy-washy personality. He wants to feel comradeship with the enlisted men he commands but has trouble relating to them. He is naive and can not make up his mind about what he believes. Cummings takes interest in him but the interest is ambiguous. He feels a sense of paternalism towards Hearne and possibly even a physical attraction to him. Their relationship is an echo of Billy Budd, though, and the mixed emotions Cummings feels cause him to send the lieutenant on what might be a suicide mission.

     Cummings is a complex character and one that is hard to sympathize with. He calls himself a reactionary, sympathizes with fascism while engaging in a war to defeat Hitler, and thinks of himself as a genius trying to attain the powers of a god. He clearly states that America’s purpose in fighting World War II is not to save the Jews but to assert American hegemony. He is motivated by deep insecurities though. Mailer drops hints that he has repressed homosexual cravings. His marriage is failing. He has memories of being mugged and beaten nearly to death during a business trip in Rome. His subordinates do not obey his orders and his superiors snub him when he asks for a back up ship for an operation to penetrate the Japanese lines from the rear of Atopopei. True to Mailer’s form, the suggestion of anal penetration is probably deliberate; even in his early works, Mailer had an obsessive tendency to write about anuses. Cummings writes journal entries because he thinks of himself as an intellectual heavyweight but in reality his philosophy is little more than generic Freudian descriptions of guns as phallic symbols, battlefields as wombs, and the trajectory of shells following the arc shape of a breast or a man’s ass.

     When Hearne defies Cummings’ orders, he is sent out to lead the recon troops through the jungle to attack the Japanese from behind while the other units attack from the front. The mission is pointless, though, since the Japanese are backed up against Mount Anaka and have nowhere to go if attacked from the front. The platoon is too small for the mission anyways and they are sent without adequate supplies. Even after they leave, Cummings can not decide if he sent Hearne on the detail because he wanted him to get killed.

     The Naked and the Dead is a great book if you catch on to what Mailer wanted to accomplish. The characters are easily understood and realistically drawn. The portrayal of the commanding officers makes a poignant point about the psychological nature of powerful men. Every character is naked because the narrative strips them all of their outer facades and they are all dead because the military dehumanizes them, treats them like machines, and sends them off to die without regard for who they are as people. The idea that human life is confusing and fragile is expressed well. The novel’s biggest flaw is that Mailer sometimes spends too much time describing things that do not need to be exhaustively described. This flaw does not ruin the book though.

     While The Naked and the Dead is not a protest novel, it does portray war and the military in a negative light. It is no surprise that Norman Mailer went on to become a leftist and a participant in the anti-war movement of the 1960s. It is also interesting to see what kind of writer he was before he had his psychotic breakdown in the 1950s. The roots of the older Norman Mailer are here. 

Mailer, Norman. The Naked and the Dead. Picador/Henry Holt and Company, New York: 1998.