This review’s got spoilers! Look away!
The worst part of the war is not what you think it is. It’s not your enemy who’s willing to put a bullet in you, nor is it the fear of death that is constantly there. According to The Naked and the Dead the biggest opponent in the war is ennui, the relationships between soldiers that’s often strained, and your own mental and physical limitations. War is rather boring, but that is not to say that the book is boring. It is a behemoth and can drag on, sure, but reading The Naked and the Dead is a war in itself. It is often not an enjoyable book to read, and you might be feeling swelling with an inexplicable void.
There is not much violence to speak of here. The Americans are fighting the Japanese, but out of the 700 plus pages, the Japanese counterparts only make an appearance in a handful of them. Who are the GIs fighting against then? The book opens with a card game — the men are gambling and fighting against each other for Australian bank notes. The game gets too loud and resentment ensues. The dynamics of the soldiers are not one of the happy family, die for the person next to you and love him like a brother, not like what you see in the movies these days. In fact, the relationships between the men are rather cold, impersonal and they’re just getting through the day so that if they stay long enough, they might get home. They might “like” each other, but some keep a distance to not get too attached lest one of them gets blown off the next day.
The enemy is invisible, and we’re not really clear who they’re fighting against. When a soldier dies, the death is unremarkable, almost distant. We can go to the extent to say that the men kill themselves, or each other. In the beginning of the story, Hennesy was killed by a shrapnel because he exposed himself out of the shame of shitting himself. Hearn was effectively killed by Cummings assigning him to the recon patrol with Croft’s platoon, and Croft himself is guilty of at least manslaughter as he withheld the intelligence that there are Japanese gunners ahead of the track, thus killing Croft.
It is also the small battles for personal pride which also cause the strains in the relationships. Hearn’s deliberate disposal of the cigarette butt on General Cummings floor resulted in his humiliation, that he has no choice but to tow in line. He is insignificant and has little power over the whims of the general, and thus the army and the country.
There are also racial tensions. The African American voice was unfortunately missing, but no matter, the soldiers were prejudiced enough to eschew their two Jewish comrades in Goldstein and Roth. Goldstein speaks a proper textbook English and is out of place with the rest. Roth fits better, but he is still in the fringes. Goldstein were quickly blamed for mishaps even though the blame may not be on him. The Americans are not fighting Germany, who are themselves in a war against Jews, but in a smaller scale, the Jews in the platoon are treated with at least disdain and there is a small war against them, for lack of something better to do and scapegoats.
It is the war against one’s on will, physically and emotionally. Some of the most exhausting passages in war literature are sandwiched within the pages of this book. The platoon’s task of carrying the anti-tank guns to the encampment early on in the novel was a brutal read, and we feel each ounce of fatigue until the men physically and mentally break. The last quarter of the novel is a war of attrition as the men took on the mountain to finish their recon mission practically behind enemy lines. The mountain is insurmountable, and perhaps there is a deeper meaning here in the book’s most important battle.
The men’s most important battle is the search for meaning in the middle of this senseless war. They have plenty of time to reflect, sure, and their reflections (or the books reflection of their past life in the “time machine” passages) give us the connecting dots on the way their character behave in the war. Gallagher’s story is perhaps the most memorable, as he lost his wife in childbirth. However, we find from the flashbacks that he often beats his wife and resents her. The psychology of war is deeply embedded in the cultures seething in the veins of the soldiers. But any search of meaning to justify their place in the war is as insurmountable as Mount Anaka which chewed and spat them back to the coast, dying for relief, only to find out that their efforts were in vain and that the war in the island was practically over. There is no meaning here, and this is the men’s biggest defeat. In this way, The Naked and The Dead reeks of traces of postmodern literature, as strong a stench as the men’s unwashed and damp uniforms in the muds of Mount Anaka.
Mailer was only 24 when he completed the book, say what you want, for the flaws of the book it is still a rare and outstanding achievement. And like young writers, he’d rather say more than leave out the details, thus making the book full of it — each men’s life were dissected and we got to know the rather well. But sometimes it was still hard to like them. I hate to say that I don’t feel much for these men, I had no favourites, and connect to practically none of them. Perhaps Hearn, who was a bit of fish out of water in the platoon. Was this the strength or flaw of the book — that it had no moral centre, or a protagonist as anchor, and the antagonists are multi-faceted? Though I started off disliking the book for its long passages, and not much that happens in between, The Naked and the Dead still stands to me an important book in the saturated collection of war literature.
