The Naked and the Dead. Norman Mailer.

The Naked and the Dead
Norman Mailer
New York: The New American Library: A Signet Book. 1948.

Why read it? A novel about the complex inner workings of people who engage in war, their interactions with others, and the effects of authority on individuals who are under their command. The battles can be named, won or lost, and the statistics of losses can be compiled, but the personal experience of war is most vividly found in novels like this one. This novel demonstrates again the ironies of warfare.

The following summary of the novel has been taken from James D. Hart, Ed., The Oxford Companion to American Literature, Fourth Edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 1965, p. 580: An American division led by General Cummings invades a Japanese island, securing a position in spite of heavy losses. The varied members of Sergeant Croft's reconnaissance platoon are characterized through flashbacks and through their violent language and behavior under the stress of jungle warfare.

Despite being undermanned, they withstand a Japanese counterattack, but shoot prisoners and hunt drunkenly among corpses for souvenirs. Personal conflict develops between Cummings, an intellectual who believes that 'the morality of the future is power morality,' and Lieutenant Hearn, who is unwilling to fit into the general's 'fear ladder,' while Private Valsen opposes Croft's brutal implementation of Cummings's military philosophy.

For a combination of personal, political and strategic reasons, the platoon is sent on a dangerous patrol across a mountain range, and returns, decimated by casualties, to find the Japanese destroyed and the island taken independently of their efforts.