The Naked and the Dead
Norman Mailer
1948

Introduction

Published in 1948, The Naked and the Dead earned overwhelming popular and critical acclaim. Most reviewers deemed the novel to be one of the best war stories ever written, praising Mailer's realistic depiction of men at war. The novel focuses on the adventures of a fourteen-man infantry platoon stationed on a Japanese-held island in the South Pacific during World War II. In the course of the novel, the men struggle to survive and find meaning in their lives.

In his introduction to the fiftieth-anniversary edition of the novel, Mailer asserted that The Naked and the Dead reflects what he learned from Tolstoy: "compassion is of value and enriches our life only when compassion is severe, which is to say when we can perceive everything that is good and bad about a character but are still able to feel that the sum of us as human beings is probably a little more good than awful. In any case, good or bad, it reminds us that life is like a gladiators' arena for the soul and so we can feel strengthened by those who endure, and feel awe and pity for those who do not." Mailer's deft and evocative portrayal of the characters' heroic struggle to retain their dignity as they experience the horrors of war provides the book with its enduring value.

Author Biography

A self-proclaimed philosophical "existentialist" and political "left conservative," Norman Mailer has

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led a colorful and notorious life. He was born on January 31, 1923 in Long Branch, New Jersey, to Isaac (an accountant) and Fanny (owner of a small business) and moved with his family to Brooklyn at the age of four. When he was sixteen, he began his studies in aeronautical engineering at Harvard University and developed an interest in writing.

In 1944, Mailer was inducted into the United States Army and served in the Philippines. He recounted his experiences there in his first novel, The Naked and the Dead, which gained much critical and popular acclaim. In the introduction to the fiftieth-anniversary edition of the novel, Mailer contends that "it came out at exactly the right time when, near to three years after the Second World War ended, everyone was ready for a big war novel that gave some idea of what it had all been like." After The Naked and the Dead, Mailer earned more praise for his nonfiction. In 1959 he achieved national attention for Advertisements for Myself, a collection of essays and writings that chronicled his career and personal life, and in 1980 for The Executioner's Song, an account of the life and subsequent execution of notorious murderer Gary Gilmore.

Mailer earned several awards for his literary achievements. They include the National Book Award for nonfiction for Miami and the Siege of Chicago (1968); National Book Award for nonfiction, Pulitzer Prize in letters general nonfiction, and George Polk Award in 1969 for Armies of the Night. He also won the Pulitzer Prize for The Executioner's Song; an Emmy nomination for best adaptation of the for screenplay for the movie version of The Executioner's Song; and the Emerson-Thoreau Medal for lifetime literary achievement from American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1989. Mailer has also produced, directed, and acted in films. He has been a candidate for democratic nomination in two mayoral races in New York City in 1960 and 1969 and was the co-founding editor of Village Voice in 1955.

Plot Summary

Wave

Mailer introduces the novel's major characters in the opening scene as the assault of Anopopei, a mythical Pacific island, is about to begin. The platoon is part of a 6,000-man force poised to take the Japanese-held island in order to clear the way for a larger American advance into the Philippines. The story of the invasion is interspersed with vignettes that provide background information on several of the men. As they wait for their rush onto the beach, many of them address and try to overcome their fear of death.

Argil and Mold

The American soldiers advance quickly during the first few days of the campaign, with little resistance from the Japanese. Soon they realize just how oppressive the heat and moisture of the jungle is. Lieutenant Robert Hearn feels dissatisfied with his position as aide to General Cummings and "contemptuous" of the other officers. He enjoys his almost nightly talks with the general, even though he acknowledges that he is a "tyrant." The general is a complex character who enjoys complete power over his men, and Hearn is attracted to that power.

One day, Hearn becomes upset when the officers get more than their share of rations. In response, the general provides him with a lesson on the politics of war: "Every time an enlisted man sees an officer get an extra privilege, it breaks him down a little more." As a result the "enlisted man involved is confirmed a little more in the idea of his own inferiority" and he grows to fear his superior officers. The general explains, "The army functions best when you're frightened of the man above you, and contemptuous of your subordinates."

The troops grow restless as they wait for orders to advance. When they eventually get orders to carry guns inland, they are soon exhausted by the arduous trip through the jungle. As enemy fire stops them at a river, a Japanese bullet shatters Private Toglio's elbow. Later, Croft, Red, and Gallagher come across some wounded Japanese soldiers and Croft orders them killed. Red experiences a mixture of disgust and excitement as he shoots one. Croft taunts another—allowing him to think he will be spared—and then kills him.

One night, the men get drunk and decide to hunt for Japanese souvenirs. After they come across several dead Japanese, the stench and sight of the maggot-infested bodies overcome them. They are suddenly aware of their own fragility and vulnerability. When they return to the main camp, Gallagher is told his wife died during childbirth; as a result of this news, he goes into shock. Minetta is sent to the Division Clearing Hospital for a minor wound. Fearful of further combat, he attempts to feign insanity so he can stay in the hospital longer. Eventually, he becomes restless and afraid of the other patients and returns to the platoon.

During one of their talks, the general confides to Hearn about his troubled relationship with his wife. Revolted by his display of self-pity, Hearn responds coldly, which humiliates the general. In retribution, the general reassigns him to a tedious post. After Hearn leaves a cigarette butt on the floor of the general's quarters, the general decides to flex his power and forces Hearn to pick up a cigarette that he throws on the floor. As a result, Hearn suffers an "excruciating humiliation." To avoid any further interaction with Hearn, the general assigns him to lead the platoon on a scouting mission behind the enemy troops.

Plant and Phantom

Croft resents Hearn's presence; he determines that the Lieutenant is a threat to his leadership over the platoon. During a skirmish with the Japanese, Wilson gets hit in the stomach and Hearn sends Ridges, Goldstein, Stanley, and Brown to take him back to the beach. Later, Roth finds an injured bird, which Croft grabs and crushes with his hand. After Hearn forces Croft to apologize to Roth, Croft determines to make him pay for his humiliation.

Croft convinces Hearn to send Martinez out on a reconnaissance mission to discover where the enemy troops are located. Martinez reports back to Croft that a company of Japanese soldiers is occupying the pass ahead of them. Croft, however, informs Hearn that Martinez found no evidence of Japanese troops in the pass. As a result, Hearn, without the proper precautions, leads the platoon right into the enemy and is killed. Croft happily resumes control of the men and orders them to climb Mount Anaka.

The trek up the mountain weakens him as well as his men. After an exhausted Roth falls to his death, Red refuses to go any further. Croft stands his ground and warns Red that he will shoot him if he doesn't continue up the mountain. Realizing at that moment what Croft did to Hearn, Red ashamedly backs down. As the men continue their arduous trek up the mountain, Croft stumbles into a hornet's nest. After the stinging hornets force the men back down the mountain, Croft finally admits defeat and leads his men back to the beach.

While the rest of the men are making their way up the mountain, Ridges, Goldstein, Stanley, and Brown struggle with the task of carrying an injured Wilson through the jungle. Halfway to the beach, Stanley breaks down from exhaustion and, seizing a chance to rest, Brown agrees to stay with him. Goldstein and Ridges continue alone with the back-breaking task. After several agonizing hours, Wilson eventually dies.

Back at the main camp, the general's departure for Army Headquarters forces Dalleson to take command of the invasion. The decisions Dalleson makes, along with a good measure of luck, result in the destruction of the Japanese forces. The next day during the boat ride back to camp, the men feel "no hope, no anticipation. There would be nothing but the deep cloudy dejection that overcast everything." Yet when they see the mountain, they experience a sense of pride about almost making it to the top.

Wake

When General Cummings returns, he discovers that the Japanese were almost out of food and ammunition and so would not have been able to hold out much longer. He admits that he had little to do with the American victory and that the reconnaissance mission had been useless. The novel ends with Dalleson musing on the pride he would feel when future map-reading classes used his new teaching materials.

Characters

Sergeant William Brown

Brown is an insecure young man who doubts his abilities as a soldier. He is obsessed with the thought of his wife cheating on him while he is at war.

Staff Sergeant Sam Croft

Croft leads the Intelligence and Reconnaissance platoon of Headquarters Company of the 460th Infantry Regiment and is considered by the men to be "the best platoon sergeant in the Army and the meanest." He is "efficient and strong and usually empty and his main cast of mind was a superior contempt toward nearly all other men. He hated weakness and he loved practically nothing." Croft kills for pleasure: on Anopopei he shoots a Japanese prisoner after allowing him to think he was safe, crushes a bird that one of his men had found, and coldly plans Hearn's death in an effort to regain control of the platoon. Croft loves the war for it allows him to unleash his hatred and thirst for power. He explains, "I hate everything which is not in myself."

General Cummings

Cummings is the commander of the invading American forces on Anopopei and has an "almost unique ability to extend his thoughts into immediate and effective action." A brilliant and ambitious fascist, he believes that totalitarianism is preferable to communism because "it's grounded firmly in men's actual natures." He insists "there's never a man who can swear to his own innocence. We're all guilty, that's the truth." In order to obtain victory, he attempts to break his men's spirits. He explains: "there's one thing about power. It can flow only from the top down. When there are little surges of resistance at the middle levels, it merely calls for more power to be directed downward, to burn it out." Beneath his austere surface, however, lies self-pity and paranoia.

Casimir Czienwicz

Czienwicz (also known as Polack) is a cynical, shrewd member of Croft's platoon. His rough life growing up on the streets of Chicago prepared him for the rigors of life in the army.

Major Dalleson

After Hearn's death, Dalleson takes over the American invasion of Anopopei. A thorough and adequate leader, he feels "a little overwhelmed" in his dealings with officers because he "feared the slowness of his mind." Sometimes his responsibilities depress him. "He was always afraid that a situation would develop in which he would have to call upon the more dazzling aptitudes that his position demanded, and which he did not have." A few good decisions—coupled with a lot of luck—enables him to take credit for the defeat of the Japanese army on Anopopei.

Roy Gallagher

A member of Croft's platoon, Gallagher is a hotheaded, racist, working-class guy from South Boston. He continually feels sorry for himself, insisting "everything turned out lousy for him sooner or later." His prediction is realized when he gets news that his wife Mary died in childbirth.

Joe Goldstein

Goldstein is another member of Croft's platoon. While occasionally the target of anti-Semitic slurs, Goldstein fares better than Roth because of his religious faith, dogged courage, and essentially trusting nature. He is one of the men that carries the wounded Wilson through the jungle.

Lieutenant Robert Hearn

Hearn is General Cummings' young Harvard-educated aide. His wealthy background and slightly aristocratic air are at odds with his tyrannical supervisors as well as the enlisted men. Therefore, he does little to make friends on the island. He admits he feels "blank … superior, I don't give a damn, I'm just waiting around." He initially enjoys the general's company, but is eventually alienated by his mind games and self-pity.

Hearns' reserve is shattered when the general humiliates him by forcing him to pick up a cigarette he has tossed on the floor. The incident leaves him "burning with shame and self-disgust … suffering an excruciating humiliation which mocked him in its very intensity." When the general gives Hearn command of the reconnaissance mission, Hearn enjoys the sense of power his position affords him. Yet he tries to treat his men fairly and humanely before he is killed.

Hennessey

A young soldier in Croft's platoon, Hennessey is killed on their first day on the island. His death fills the other men with a sense of doom.

Japbait

See Sergeant Julio Martinez

Sergeant Julio Martinez

Martinez (also known as Japbait) is an excellent scout for Croft's platoon. He sometimes becomes nervous about giving orders to the other men, afraid that they would not listen to a Mexican American. Yet his role in the platoon gives him "a quiet pride that he was the man upon whom the safety of the others depended. This was a sustaining force which carried him through dangers his will and body would have resisted."

Steve Minetta

Minetta is another member of Croft's platoon. When he is sent to the Division Clearing Hospital for a minor wound, his fears about returning to combat prompt him to feign insanity so he can stay there longer. Eventually, though, he becomes restless and goes back to the platoon.

Polack

See Casimir Czienwicz

Oscar Ridges

A member of Croft's platoon, Ridges is a dull-witted and good-tempered religious Mississippi farmer.

Roth

Roth is a member of Croft's platoon. A well-educated Jewish man, he considers himself superior to the other men in the platoon, which effectively isolates him from them. Yet he experiences feelings of self-pity when he acknowledges his inability to be as good a soldier as the others are. His weakness and overwhelming fatigue cause him to fall to his death on Mount Anaka.

Stanley

When Stanley is promoted to corporal, he develops authority and begins to bully the men. Eventually though, he wonders "how he could lead men in combat when he was so terrified himself." He breaks down during the trek back to the beach with Wilson and has to be left behind.

Toglio

Toglio is a member of Croft's platoon. A Japanese bullet shatters his elbow shortly after they arrive. The other men envy the good fortune of his "million-dollar" injury.

Private Red Valsen

A rebellious member of Croft's platoon, Red is an embittered, itinerant laborer from the coal mines of Montana. His hard life leaves him feeling old at twenty-three. Although he enlists as a way out of the cycle of poverty and boredom, he experiences "the familiar ache of age and sadness and wisdom" on the island. While determined to be a loner in an effort to shield himself from the suffering of others, he periodically feels "sad compassion" for the men "in which one seems to understand everything, all that men want and fail to get." Red resists authority and often clashes with Croft. His cynicism results from his feeling that "everything is crapped up, everything is phony, everything curdles when you touch it."

Woodrow Wilson

A member of Croft's platoon, Wilson is a wild, fun-loving man from Georgia who is suffering from venereal disease. He gets shot in the stomach and eventually dies after an arduous trek through the jungle.

Buddy Wyman

A twenty-eight-year-old soldier in Croft's platoon, Wyman has "vague dreams about being a hero, assuming this would bring him some immense reward which would ease his life and remove the problems of supporting his mother and himself." The war, however, does not live up to his romantic visions.

Media Adaptations

• The Naked and the Dead was adapted for the screen by Denis Sanders, in a movie directed by Raoul Walsh and produced by RKO Studios in 1958. Cliff Robertson starred as Hearn, Aldo Ray as Croft, and Raymond Massey as General Cummings. It is available from United Video.

Themes

War and Peace

The Naked and the Dead focuses on both war and peace as its narrative moves back and forth between the battle on Anopopei and the lives of many of the men prior to the war. The reader is able to discern how the war has changed the lives of these men and the ones that they have left behind in the United States.

Victim and Victimization

In a war novel, it makes sense that the theme of victimization would be a recurring one throughout the story. On the island, General Cummings and Sergeant Croft are victimizers; they are so insecure and power-hungry that they will risk the lives of their men to insure their absolute power. This results in the victimization of their men and ultimately causes the death of some.

The brilliant and ruthless General Cummings exercises a tyrannical control over his men. He maintains:

There's one thing about power. It can flow only from the top down. When there are little surges of resistance at the middle levels, it merely calls for more power to be directed downward, to burn it out.

Cummings continually tries to "burn out" his men's resistance, including that of Lieutenant Hearn, who makes the mistake of challenging Cummings' control. As a result, Cummings first humiliates him and then sends him on a useless reconnaissance mission around the back of the island. Hearn dies during this mission.

Croft, who "had a deep unspoken belief that whatever made things happen was on his side," joins in Hearn's victimization. When Hearn is assigned to Croft's platoon and therefore threatens Croft's absolute control over his command, Croft sadistically manipulates Hearn into a dangerous position behind enemy lines where he is soon gunned down. Croft also victimizes Private Valsen, who continually rebels against authority in an effort to maintain his personal dignity. Croft eventually breaks Valsen's spirit, forcing him to back down from his attempts to save himself and the other men on Mount Anaka.

Mailer reinforces the theme of victimization and in many different ways throughout the novel. Many of the men feel powerless within the constraints of American society: for example, Red Valsen abandoned his family in order to flee the impoverished and dangerous life in the coalmines of Montana. The stratification of American society has also victimized Lieutenant Hearn, who was born into an upper-class family in the Midwest. His domineering father pushed him to emphasize his "masculine" qualities, producing a "cold rather than shy" young man. As a result of their experiences, Valsen and Hearn experience similar feelings about life: Valsen is governed by a "particular blend of pessimism and fatalism," while Hearn insists that "if you searched something long enough, it always turned to dirt."

Topics for Further Study

• Look up the history of the battles between the American and Japanese armies that took place on the Philippine Islands. Were any similar to the ones that took place in the novel? Research this battle and describe it to your classmates.
• The essay included in this entry refers to Stephen Crane's "The Open Boat." Read the story and compare it to the novel. Describe the naturalistic style of both. Are the themes of these works similar or different?
• Pick a character in the novel and create a timeline of the character's life from the information in the novel. What impact did this character's past have on his behavior during the novel? How has your past influenced the person you are today?
• Investigate the psychological and/or sociological nature of power. What causes the desire for power? What are its effects on its perpetrator and victims? Do you see this desire for power in your own life? Describe a situation that you have observed or experienced. Where you the victim or victimizer?

Courage and Cowardice

Valsen and Hearn exhibit courage when they struggle to preserve their personal dignity and the lives of the men around them—even when faced with personal vendettas and impossible circumstances. Valsen does not back down from his challenge to Croft on Mount Anaka until the Sergeant threatens to shoot him. Hearn accepts the challenge of leading the men into dangerous territory. The other soldiers in the platoon must also struggle with feelings of courage and cowardice. Some, like Goldstein and Ridges, successfully combat their overwhelming fatigue and sense of insecurity as they continue the arduous task of returning the wounded Wilson to the beach. Others find any way they can to avoid the terrors of war and preserve their sanity in such a chaotic situation.

Style

Structure

Mailer structured The Naked and the Dead to include not only the story of the armed conflict on the mythical Japanese-held island of Anopopei during World War II, but also the stories of each of the main characters involved in the struggle. He often breaks his main narrative with "Time Machine" vignettes of the past history of these men to provide readers with important information about their characters. This episodic structure illuminates character motivation and development; as a result, it also helps set up the novel's central conflicts and thematic concerns.

Weltanschauung

The episodic structure of the novel functions to sustain its Weltanschauung, or "world view"—in this case, a naturalistic impression of the forces that continually frustrate human will and action. Naturalism is a term used for a group of writers, including Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, and John Dos Passos, whose works reflect a pessimistic view of the nature of experience. The naturalistic view proposes that humans are controlled by their heredity and environment and so cannot exercise free will.

The Naked and the Dead expresses this literary naturalism in its story of the battle on Anopopei as well as in the histories of the men. Cummings and Croft are governed by their lust for power and violence. In an institution such as the military, these men are rewarded for what seems to be a biological impulse. Therefore, they succeed when more sensitive, less brutal men are killed or injured.

The soldiers that make up Croft's platoon feel like pawns in a large game that they have no control over; even worse, they are at the mercy of cruel and manipulative leaders. Even the officers, however, eventually learn that they do not have absolute control. After luck plays a large part in the takeover of the island, Cummings must admit that his careful strategic planning did little to help win the campaign. As a result, he will probably not get the promotion he coveted. A swarm of hornets thwarts Croft's monomaniacal drive to climb Mount Anaka, and he eventually must also admit defeat.

The landscape constantly interferes with all the men as they struggle to survive. The jungle's heat, humidity, and rugged terrain exhaust them and impede their progress. At home, poverty, class, race, as well as other factors such as alcoholism and violent tendencies, determine the men's choices and future. As they come to acknowledge their inability to control their destinies, their prime motivation becomes a personal battle for dignity.

Symbolism

The jungle and Mount Anaka are important symbols in The Naked and the Dead. The oppressive heat and primitive nature of the jungle reflects the animalistic, primal nature exhibited by some of the men, especially Croft. His cruel desire for power causes him to coldly shoot an unarmed Japanese soldier, kill a small bird with his bare hand, and plan Hearn's death for his own ends. Mount Anaka proves a formidable obstacle to the exhausted and traumatized men, and so symbolizes a barrier to human progress.

Historical Context

The Great Depression

The stock market crash in 1929 triggered the Great Depression, the most severe economic crisis in U.S. history. The impact on Americans was staggering. In 1933 unemployment rose to sixteen million people, about one-third of the available labor force. During the early years of the Depression, men and women searched eagerly and diligently for any type of work. However, after several months of no sustained employment, they became discouraged. President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal policies, which offered the country substantial economic relief, helped mitigate the effects of the Depression. Full economic recovery was not complete until the government channeled money into the war effort in the early 1940s.

World War II in the Pacific

In 1940 two events occurred that exacerbated the growing tension between the United States and Japan: Japan invaded Indochina and signed the Tripartite Pact, which created an alliance between Japan, Germany, and Italy against Great Britain and France. As a result Washington drastically increased economic sanctions by withholding oil and freezing all Japanese assets. In retaliation, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, a naval base on Oahu, Hawaii on December 7, 1941; eight battleships and thirteen other naval vessels were destroyed and three thousand naval and military personnel were killed or wounded. As a result of this surprise attack, United States entered the war and battled Japan on the sea (most notably at Midway in 1942) and on Japanese-held islands, and through a bombing campaign on the Japanese mainland.

In 1942 Japanese forces occupied much of the southeastern Pacific: the Philippine Islands, Indonesia, and New Guinea. That same year the Americans launched their counterattack. The Coral Sea naval battle prevented the Japanese from gaining access to Australia and the U.S. Marines regained Guadalcanal. After U.S. forces took control of the Solomon Islands in 1943 and New Guinea in 1944, they advanced on Japanese-held island groups: the Philippines, the Marianas Islands, Okinawa, and Iwo Jima. After protracted fighting, Allied forces took Birmania in October 1944, Manilla and Iwo Jima in March 1945, and Okinawa in June of 1945. Japan resisted until 1945; but after atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of that year, Japan reluctantly accepted the terms of an unconditional surrender, which was the dissolution of the Japanese Empire and the release of all seized territories.

Compare & Contrast

• 1948: In the aftermath of World War II, Japan is occupied by American forces. American occupation aims to put in place a democratic form of government and reestablish a successful and stable peacetime economy. Under the supervision of General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander of Occupying Forces, Japanese war criminals are tried and convicted; democratic elections are held in 1946; and a new constitution goes into effect in 1947. However, economic reforms are more difficult to implement and it will take years for Japan to stabilize their economy.
  
  Today: Japan remains a stable democratic power in the South Pacific and is a staunch ally of the United States. Despite recent economic setbacks, Japan is also a formidable economic power in the world community.
• Late 1940s: After Europe is decimated as a result of World War II, America becomes an economic superpower, creating a thriving economy and a population boom. A whole generation of Americans born in the late 1940s and early 1950s will become known as the Baby Boom generation.
  
  Today: America has experienced the longest economic expansion in its history. The impact of technological progress propels the stock market and encourages economic expansion.
• 1948: Although more and more women work at manufacturing jobs formerly held by men, most women remain in traditional roles in the domestic sphere.
  
  Today: Because of economic circumstances, many women are forced to work outside the home. In addition, the stigma of the working woman is a thing of the past; women are encouraged to educate themselves and excel in the workplace. Increased opportunities mean that women can be found at all levels of the corporate structure, yet many people feel that sexual discrimination and sexual harassment are still problems that inhibit the progress of women in the workplace.

Women during World War II

After American men went off to fight in World War II, jobs became available for women in many different fields, including manufacturing. By 1945, approximately nineteen million women held jobs. Women benefited from the employment in several ways: economically, as the income helped to support their families and the economy itself; and emotionally, as they knew that they were contributing to the war effort. As a result, women were independent and fulfilled; this was difficult to relinquish when, at the end of the war, the men came home and demanded their jobs back. Most wives returned to their traditional roles in the home.

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Critical Overview

When The Naked and the Dead was published in 1948, the novel earned Norman Mailer overwhelming popular and critical acclaim. In fact, it claimed the top spot on the The New York Times "Bestseller List" for eleven consecutive weeks. Most critics, like Atlantic reviewer C. J. Rolo, considered the novel to be "the most impressive piece of fiction to date about Americans in the Second World War."

David Dempsey asserted in The New York Times that it is "undoubtedly the most ambitious novel to be written about the recent conflict, it is also the most ruthlessly honest and in scope and in integrity compares favorable with the best that followed World War I." Richard Match contended in his review in the New York Herald Tribune, "With this one astonishing book … [Mailer] joins the ranks of major American novelists."

Several reviews focused on the novel's realistic account of the war. Time considered it "distinguished primarily for simple realism, a forthright, almost childlike honesty, a command of ordinary speech, a cool and effortless narrative style." Some commentators deemed the language and subject matter shocking. A reviewer for Kirkus Reviews maintained that the novel was:

a brilliant book—but one that makes such harrowing reading, and which is written with such intensity, such bald realism, such unrestrained accuracy of detail in speech and thought, that all but the tough-skinned will turn from it, feeling reluctant to look again on the baring of man's inner beings under stress of jungle warfare…. [The Naked and the Dead is] an unpleasant experience, but one that makes an unforgettable impression.

In the Library Journal, Donald Wasson contends: "This is an exceptionally fine book … the language employed is very strong and so accurately reported that it probably will offend many and may create problems in handling."

While some critics deride the novel's length and wordiness, most praise what Ira Wolfert in the Nation calls Mailer's "remarkable gift for storytelling." Moreover, Wolfert insists that the novel proves Mailer has "poetry in him and ideas."

A few critics, however, offer mixed reviews of the novel, finding fault most often with Mailer's execution of the novel's themes. In the New Yorker John Lardner agrees that Mailer "tells a good story powerfully and well," but finds that it "shares the tendency of most current novels toward undersim-plification—it is too long and it is too complicated … [while] its dialogue is true and straightforward." Dempsey points to an "overanalysis of motive" and a "failure of reach." While he considers the book "substantial," Maxwell Geismar, writing in the Saturday Review of Literature, maintains that there is "no real balance of the dramatic forces in it, just as there is a final lack of emotional impact."

As Dempsey notes, the publication of The Naked and the Dead "bears witness to a new and significant talent among American novelists," an opinion that has prevailed, for the most part, throughout Mailer's career. The novel's critical reputation remains strong, but the response to his subsequent works has been mixed. Mailer had a difficult time living up to the promise and popularity of The Naked and the Dead. In his autobiographical Advertisements for Myself, published in 1959, Mailer admits to the pressures he faced after the success of his first novel: "I had the freak of luck to start high on the mountain, and go down sharp while others were passing me."

In the years following the publication of The Naked and the Dead, Mailer earned notoriety as a dissident, a social critic, and a celebrity. He did garner praise for his forays into nonfiction, evidence with the highly acclaimed The Armies of the Night (1969) and The Executioner's Song (1980). Mailer's experiments with different literary forms, his engrossing studies of human nature and American society, and his realistic prose style have cemented his reputation as one of the major American writers of the twentieth century.

Criticism

Wendy Perkins

Wendy Perkins, an Associate Professor of English at Prince George's Community College in Maryland, has published articles on several twentieth-century authors. In this essay she examines how the narrative structure of The Naked and the Dead reinforces the novel's naturalistic themes.

[The wind-tower] was a giant, standing with its back to the plight of the ants. It represented in a degree … the serenity of nature amid the struggles of the individual—nature in the wind, and nature in the vision of men. She did not seem cruel to him then, not beneficent, not treacherous, not wise. But she was indifferent, flatly indifferent.

This famous passage from Stephen Crane's short story "The Open Boat," which focuses on four men in a small dinghy struggling against the current to make it to shore, is often quoted as an apt expression of the tenets of naturalism, a literary movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in France, America, and England. Writers included in this group—like Crane, Emile Zola, and Theodore Dreiser—expressed in their works a biological and/or environmental determinism that prevented their characters from exercising their free will and thus controlling their destinies. Crane often focused on the social and economic factors that impacted his characters. Zola's and Dreiser's work often mixed this type of environmental determinism with the influences of heredity in their portraits of the animalistic nature of men and women engaged in the endless and brutal struggle for survival.

Many critics have noted the same type of naturalistic tendencies in Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead, which takes place on a mythical South Pacific island. The novel's "Time Machine" sections, which provide histories of several of the men, also help reinforce the novel's naturalistic themes. These vignettes, along with the story of the island battles, present a bleak portrait of the nature of war and of American society, a vision tempered by the heroic endurance of his characters.

The jungle is a formidable obstacle as the soldiers struggle to advance on the enemy in The Naked and the Dead—much like "indifferent nature" continually impedes the men's efforts in the "The Open Boat" to reach the safety of the shore. The oppressive heat and humidity sap the men's strength as they engage in skirmishes with the Japanese. Their climb up Mount Anaka is completely exhausting: so much that Red acknowledges that his health has been ruined and Roth falls to his death. Like the wind-tower in the "Open Boat," Mount Anaka stands "with its back to the plight of the ants." Philip Bufithis in his critical study of the works of Mailer notes how the mountain "taunts" Croft with its "purity" and "austerity." He asserts:

The mountain becomes for Croft what his troops are for Cummings: the "other" that resists his control and must be molded to serve his will. Like Cummings, however, Croft is unable to control the circuits of chance. When he stumbles over a hornets' nest, the men flee down the mountain and the march abruptly ends.

Thus the mountain becomes a symbol of indifferent nature as well as a barrier to human progress.

Another type of environmental determinism results from the hierarchical structure of the military. General Cummings explains the necessity of this structure when he tells Hearn, "the army functions best when you're frightened of the man above you, and contemptuous of your subordinates." Cummings controls the lives of his men with an iron fist and plays out his theories of power on Hearn. Sometimes Cummings treats Hearn as an equal, "and then at the proper moment jerked him again from the end of a string, established the fundamental relationship of general to lieutenant." Hearn acknowledges:

[he had] been the pet, the dog, to the master, coddled and curried, thrown sweetmeats until he had had the presumption to bite the master once. And since then he had been tormented with the particular absorbed sadism that most men could generate only toward an animal. He was a diversion for the general. And he resented it deeply with a cold speechless anger that came to some extent from the knowledge that he had acquiesced in the dog-role, had even had the dog's dreams, carefully submerged, of someday equaling the master. And Cummings had probably understood even that, had been amused.

Hearn understands Cummings' desire for power, since he has lived within the same kind of class structure all his life. Born into an upper-class family, Hearn was shaped by "the emotional prejudices of his class…. Although he had broken with them, had assumed ideas and concepts repugnant to them, he had never really discarded the emotional luggage of his first eighteen years." His privileged status had produced his overwhelming sense of boredom and alienation, especially after viewing "all the bright young people of his youth [like himself who] had butted their heads, smashed against things until they got weaker and the things still stood. A bunch of dispossessed … from the raucous stricken bosom of America."

Mailer continues his critique of American society in his depiction of the other soldiers' lives back in the States. Red must abandon his family to escape the dangerous life in the coalmines, which killed his father when Red was thirteen. Yet he, like several of the other men, cannot escape the poverty of the Depression years that makes him feel old at twenty-three. As a boy, Polack is sent to an orphanage when his mother can't support him after the death of his father. As a result, he grows up on the streets of Chicago where he becomes connected with the mob.

Prejudice also impacts the lives of the soldiers before they reach Anopopei. When he is a boy, Martinez decides he will fly planes when he grows up, but there are no opportunities for a Mexican American. Initially he is proud to make sergeant, which proves that "any man jack can be a hero." He later admits that his position, unfortunately, "does not make you white Protestant, firm and aloof." Roth and Goldstein have suffered all their lives from anti-Semitic slurs, which continue on the island. As a result the two feel alienated from the other men.

Biological determinism appears most notably in the relationship Cummings and Croft have with their men. Each man's sadistic nature and thirst for power contribute to Hearn's death. After Cummings becomes embarrassed by his display of vulnerability in front of Hearn, he determines to punish the lieutenant in an effort to regain the upper hand. Cummings concludes, "there's one thing about power. It can flow only from the top down. When there are little surges of resistance at the middle levels, it merely calls for more power to be directed downward, to burn it out."

In an effort to recoup complete control of his platoon, Croft arranges for Hearn to lead them straight into enemy territory; Hearn is almost immediately gunned down by enemy fire. Croft's sadism also emerges in his dealings with the other men in the platoon. For example, he forces Red to shoot a wounded Japanese soldier and crushes a bird Roth had found with his bare hand. Both events help to defeat the men's spirits. In the "Time Machine" sections, Mailer provides background information on Croft and Cummings that illuminates the impetus for their cruel natures. The sections suggest each inherited traits from his father and suffered under their tyrannical, harsh treatment. In fact, the section titled "The Education of Samuel Croft" portrays the brutal life Croft endured with his Texan father, who abused women and African Americans and then bragged to his son about it.

Ironically, forces beyond their control ultimately defeat both of these men. Cummings must admit that he had little to do with his company's takeover of the island: "it had been accomplished by a random play of vulgar good luck larded into a causal net of factors too large, too vague, for him to comprehend." As a result he knew he would be bypassed for more honors and promotions. Croft is ultimately defeated in his monomaniacal quest to climb Mount Anaka by a swarm of hornets and learns that his reconnaissance mission has been useless to the campaign.

In his article on the novel, Chester E. Eisinger maintains that Mailer's naturalistic universe results in "a world in which nobody wins." After Wilson dies during their agonizing trek back to the beach, Ridges "wept out of bitterness and longing and despair; he wept from exhaustion and failure and the shattering naked conviction that nothing mattered." At the same moment, Goldstein acknowledged that "there was nothing in him at the moment, nothing but a vague anger, a deep resentment, and the origins of a vast hopelessness." The rest of the men come to feel this same sense of hopelessness and vulnerability to the forces that are beyond their control. When Red sees piles of rotting Japanese bodies and notes their overpowering stench, he comes to a similar conclusion. Suddenly he is "sober and very weary," recognizing that the bodies of "men" surround him. Standing over one such body, he reflects:

Very deep inside himself he was thinking that this was a man who had once wanted things, and the thought of his own death was always a little unbelievable to him. The man had had a childhood, a youth and a young manhood, and there had been dreams and memories. Red was realizing with surprise and shock, as if he were looking at a corpse for the first time, that a man was really a very fragile thing.

Ultimately, the novel's power results from the compassionate response of readers to the characters' courage in the face of this overwhelming sense of meaninglessness. As Mailer pushes his characters to their limits and beyond, he celebrates the indomitable nature of the human spirit.

What Do I Read Next?

• The Thin Red Line (1962) was written by James Jones and focuses on the pointlessness of war in a fictional account of the battle between American and Japanese troops on Guadalcanal.
• Stephen Crane's Red Badge of Courage (1895), set during the Civil War, also explores the nature of courage and the brutal devastation of war.
• In the The Executioner's Song (1979), Norman Mailer presents a chilling look into the mind of Gary Gilmore, who in 1977 was executed for murder.
• Going After Cacciato, written in 1979 by Tim O'Brien, chronicles the story of an American soldier in Vietnam. The young man deserts his post so he can walk eight thousand miles to Paris to be present at the peace talks. The other soldiers in his squad are given orders to find him.

Source: Wendy Perkins, in an essay for Novels for Students, Gale, 2000.

Gabriel Miller

Miller is an American critic and educator who often contributes to film and literature journals. In the following essay, Miller delineates social and political themes in Mailer's early fiction.

In one of the Presidential Papers Mailer wrote, "Our history has moved on two rivers, one visible, the other underground; there has been the history of politics which is concrete, practical, and unbelievably dull … and there is the subterranean river of untapped, ferocious, lonely and romantic desires, that concentration of ecstasy and violence which is the dream life of the nation." Much of Mailer's writing, like much of the American writing from which he consciously borrows, is concerned with such dualities. As he declared in "The White Negro," Mailer finds the twentieth century, for all its horror, an exciting time to live because of "its tendency to reduce all of life to its ultimate alternatives." This fascination with dynamic polarities is reflected in Mailer's style as well, as he has struggled in his modeling of language and form to fuse the real, political/social world with the world of dream and myth. In reading his novels chronologically, one can trace Mailer's process of borrowing and merging different styles, then discarding them, and experimenting with others in quest of a voice that will be most compatible with his own recurrent themes and emerging vision. Mailer's central subject is the relationship between the individual will and a world that attempts to overwhelm and extinguish it. Intimately connected with this spiritual warfare is the subject of power, particularly political power, and the individual's need to resist the encroaching forces of totalitarianism. Mailer's early fiction clearly warns that modern man is in danger of losing his dignity, his freedom, and his sense of self before the enormous power of politics and society.

These concerns are already apparent in his first novel, The Naked and the Dead (1948), which despite its brilliant, evocative scenes of men at war, is ultimately a political novel. Mailer describes his attitude about the Second World War in "The White Negro":

The Second World War presented a mirror to the human condition which blinded anyone who looked into it … one was then obliged also to see that no matter how crippled and perverted an image of man was the society he had created, it was nonetheless his creation, his collective creation … and if society was so murderous, then who could ignore the most hideous of questions about his own nature?

The Naked and the Dead elaborates this harrowing perception of the individual who exemplifies and perpetuates what is wrong with the society he inhabits. In this first novel Mailer equates the army with society and thereby explores the fragmented nature of that society, which has militated against social development, revolutionary or otherwise. In so doing, Mailer demonstrates his own loss of faith in the individual's ability to impose himself creatively, perhaps redemptively, on the oppressive condition of the post-war world.

The novel exhibits a hodgepodge of styles and influences: the works of James Farrell, John Steinbeck, and John Dos Passos inform its structure and form. Herein the thirties novel, with its emphasis on social engagement and reform, collides with a pessimistic, even despairing world view, as Mailer blends naturalism with symbolism, realistic reportage with nightmare images and hallucinatory dream landscapes, documentary portraits with political allegory. The dramatic thrust of the novel, however, springs from Mailer's fascination with his three central figures: General Cummings, Sergeant Croft, and Lieutenant Hearn.

Cummings is presented as a despotic fascist, wholly preoccupied with the power he wields over the island which his troops occupy. When Hearn accuses him of being reactionary he dismisses the charge, claiming that the war is not being fought for ideals but for "power concentration." His plan to send a patrol to the rear of the Japanese position to determine the validity of a new strategic theory is prompted by raw opportunism, and it results in the death of three men. Croft, on the other hand, is a brave but illiterate soldier who embraces the war cause to satisfy his lust for killing and conquest. He is Cummings' collaborator, carrying out the general's orders without question. It is Croft who leads the men through jungles and swamps to pit them and himself against Mt. Anaka, even after the Japanese have surrendered (though the patrol does not know it), to further his own ambitions.

Hearn is the character who bridges the gap between the soldiers and command. Although he represents the liberal voice in the novel and so seems ideally positioned to embody the moral center in this desperate society, he emerges as a rather vague and empty character, even less sympathetic than most in Mailer's vast array of characters. This surprising deficiency in Hearn is surely intentional, as Mailer introduces an intelligent and sometimes outspoken man only to emphasize how ineffective he is. Resented both by the commanders and by the soldiers, he is eventually killed for no purpose; such is the fate of liberalism in Mailer's universe.

The political argument develops primarily in dialogues between Cummings and Hearn, whom Cummings is trying to convert to his autocratic views. This overt confrontation of ideologies, a staple of the political novel and a device Mailer would repeat less successfully in his next novel, provides an abstract gloss on the narrative, while the use of the "Time Machine" episodes to delineate the lives of the men more subtly equates the structure of society with the army. America is thus portrayed as a place of social privilege and racial discrimination, as exploitive and destructive as the military organization that represents it. Mailer presents the individual as either submitting to these repressive forces or attempting to maintain some spiritual independence. The fates of Hearn and, to some degree, Red Valsen, a Steinbeckian hobo and laborer who struggles to preserve his private vision, indicate that defiance is fruitless. Both men are destroyed, while Cummings and Croft, in their ruthless drive to power, prevail and triumph.

However, this schematic simplification does not reflect the complexity of Mailer's view, conveyed in some aspects of the novel that undercut the apparent political formula, most notably his narrative style. Mailer recounts his tale in a tone of complete objectivity, his authorial voice remaining detached and disinterested. Considering the moral dimensions of his story, this lack of anger or indignation is disorienting, and the effect is strengthened by Mailer's unsympathetic treatment of Hearn and the vibrant images of Cummings and Croft, who seem to fascinate him. Clearly Cummings' egoism repels Mailer, but it also attracts him, for in this island tyrant he perceives also the individualistic impulse to reshape and recreate an environment and in so doing, to form a new reality. Cummings thus possesses a kind of romantic aura as a dreamlike projection—which Mailer will recast in different forms in his subsequent fiction—of the active response to life which Mailer advocates in principle, if not on Cummings' specific terms. Croft, too, seeks a channel in which to funnel his powerful drives. Both men see evil as a vital force and their apprehension of it (not only in people, but in nature as well) provides them an energy and a decisive manner that the weaker, idealistic characters lack.

Still, at this point in his career Mailer did not want to exalt Cummings and Croft at the expense of Hearn. Therefore, in his climb up Mt. Anaka, Croft is left finally with feelings of despair: "Croft kept looking at the mountain. He had lost it, had missed some tantalizing revelation of himself. Of himself and much more, of life. Everything." At another point Mailer sums up Croft thus: "He hated weakness and he loved practically nothing. There was a crude unformed vision in his soul but he was rarely conscious of it." This man has energy but no form. Mailer the novelist is himself searching for the kind of form necessary to shape his vision. The liberal philosophy of a Hearn is rejected as insufficient to the challenges of modern history. It lacks the energy and daring of Croft and Cummings, but they still frighten Mailer, and he refuses to align himself with their authoritarian methods. Concluding the novel with Major Dalleson, a mediocre bureaucrat, enjoying the monotony of office details, Mailer instead pulls back from taking a definite position on the struggle he has chronicled. As Richard Poirier points out, he "has not yet imagined a hero with whose violence he can unabashedly identify himself."

Source: Gabriel Miller, "A Small Trumpet of Defiance: Politics and the Buried Life in Norman Mailer's Early Fiction," in Politics and the Muse: Studies in the Politics of Recent American Literature, Edited by Adam J. Sorkin Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1989, pp. 79-92.

Paul N. Siegel

In the following excerpt, Siegel focuses on the figures of General Cummings and Sergeant Croft who see "that there is a pattern, [and that] it means … the presence of a malign supernatural power…."

In a New Yorker interview published after The Naked and the Dead had scored its sensational success, Norman Mailer said of his novel: "It has been called a novel without hope. I think actually it is a novel with a great deal of hope. It finds … that even in man's corruption and sickness there are yearnings and inarticulate strivings for a better world, a life with more dignity." This statement is a remarkable example of how erroneous an artist can be about his creation.

The yearnings and inarticulate strivings of men for a better world of which Mailer speaks are shown in The Naked and the Dead with a sense of hopelessness about their achieving it. This is conveyed in a passage of startling beauty. As the platoon approaches the island of Anopopei in its landing craft, the men look upon it in the sunset with a strange rapture. "The island hovered before them like an Oriental monarch's conception of heaven, and they responded to it with an acute and terrible longing. It was a vision of all the beauty for which they had ever yearned, all the ecstasy they had ever sought." But this vision cannot last, and, as the sunset fades, the men are left with the reality of the terror and blackness of life….

The island of Anopopei, which presented itself as a bright vision, proves to be a nightmare. It is the mysterious world in which men live, working in unfathomable ways to confuse, terrify, and destroy them.

The only ones to whom Anopopei is not terrifying are the reactionary General Cummings, a coldly calculating machine, and Sergeant Croft, his enlisted-man counterpart, who finds in killing the satisfaction of his powers. Each believes that life contains a pattern that he can either control or identify with, not a vaguely perceived sinister cosmic conspiracy.

The action and dialogue as well as the setting and atmosphere suggest … that there is a pattern, [and that] it means … the presence of a malign supernatural power…. God, it seems, is like General Cummings, unconcerned with the personalities and fates of individual men and reducing them to the point where they cease to be individuals. As the cynical petty racketeer Polack responds to the question, "Listen, Polack, you think there's a God?" with "If there is, he sure is a sonofabitch."

The climb up the mountain and the long haul of carrying Wilson bring to the men an epiphany in which they attain a fleeting vision of a cruelly indifferent God. It is this experience which gives the title to the novel. Mailer had used the word "naked" several times earlier to mean open, vulnerable.

Source: Paul N. Siegel, "The Malign Deity of 'The Naked and the Dead,'" in Twentieth Century Literature, Hofstra University Press, October, 1974, pp. 291-97.

Randall H. Waldron

In the following excerpt, Waldron argues that Mailer's novel "underlines … the function of the machine as the controlling metaphor in World War II novels," and the "central conflict … is between the mechanistic forces of the "system" [personified by General Cummings and Sergeant Croft] and the will to individual integrity."

[The] informing influence of the machine [as the force of anonymous brute mechanism] can nowhere be studied with greater interest or reward than in Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead. To reread The Naked and the Dead in these terms is important on two counts. First, it views the book in a light that has not been trained on it before, and that illuminates and enriches our understanding of it as a novel. Second, it underlines and clarifies the function of the machine as a controlling metaphor in World War II novels by demonstrating the organic importance of that metaphor in the first really significant, probably the best, and certainly the most imitated of those novels….

The Naked and the Dead has been interpreted in a number of ways. Mailer himself has maintained that it is an ultimately hopeful "parable about the movement of man through history." Admitting that it sees man as corrupt and confused to the point of helplessness, he insists that it also finds that "there are limits beyond which he cannot be pushed, and it finds that even in his corruption and sickness there are yearnings for a better world. Most readers have denied these positive elements, making the book a pessimistic, bleak, and hopeless account of men defeated before they start by all sorts of deterministic forces. Some see it as a roughly existential document in which the horror and absurdity of war are presented as normal in the context of the human condition at large, which is itself essentially absurd. Still others—perhaps taking Mailer at his word—put it in the class of novels in which war is horrible enough, but still an educational, broadening experience in which the soul is tested and purged by adversity, and positive values triumph. Each of these interpretations is defensible; the book is by no means clear in its thematic conclusions.

The central conflict in The Naked and the Dead is between the mechanistic forces of "the system" and the will to individual integrity. Commanding General Cummings, brilliant and ruthless evangel of fascist power and control, and iron-handed, hard-nosed Sergeant Croft personify the machine. Opposing them in the attempt to maintain personal dignity and identity are Cummings' confused young aide, Lieutenant Hearn, and Private Valsen, rebellious member of Croft's platoon. Mailer fails to bring this conflict to any satisfying resolution: at the novel's end Hearn is dead and Valsen's stubborn pride defeated, but likewise Croft is beaten and humiliated and Cummings' personal ambitions thwarted. But while the resolution of the conflict may be ambiguous, the nature of it is not. The principal burden of the novel is to explore the condition of man struggling against the depersonalizing forces of modern society….

Cummings is a man so imbued with the machine, its language, its power, its values, that he not only defends it as the instrument of military and political control, but has allowed it to penetrate to the very depths of his being. It is his aphrodisiac; the object of his lust and passion. He confounds its forces with those of life and regeneration, its objects with human beings. Thus Cummings' function as symbolic character has crucial implications for the central theme of the novel: that the machine is capable of extending its domination to the most fundamental levels of man's existence, of becoming a threat to his very nature and to his humanity.

Source: Randall H. Waldron, "The Naked, the Dead, and the Machine: A New Look at Norman Mailer's First Novel," in PLMA, March, 1972, pp. 271-77.

Walter B. Rideout

In the following excerpt, Rideout argues that Mailer presents hope for humankind, in the figure of Lieutenant Robert Hearn.

Mailer's radicalism is of an indeterminate sort, the kind that expresses itself preëminently, perhaps, in images and fictional constructs rather than in abstract schema…. [His] dislike [for any kind of collective action] lies at the heart of his first novel and has often been interpreted as making his critique of capitalist society an entirely negative one; nevertheless The Naked and the Dead is a radical novel which affirms and does so within its own logic as a literary work.

Mailer's novel has a number of faults, not the least being that it sounds at times like a pastiche of the novels about World War I. The echoes of Dos Passos, another individualist rebel, are especially insistent: the interchapter biographies in The Naked and the Dead combine the techniques of the biographies and the narrative sections in U.S.A., and the fact that all of these individual soldier lives are thwarted and stunted by a sick society seems clearly reminiscent of the social vision at the base of the trilogy….

If, as Mailer himself has stated, the book "finds man corrupted, confused to the point of helplessness," these qualities particularly express the personality of that key figure, Lieutenant Robert Hearn, a confused liberal intellectual who, like the middle class in Marxist theory, is caught between the hammer and the anvil of great antagonistic forces. In him Mailer skillfully fuses form and content, for Hearn partakes in and thus links both of the power struggles which operate simultaneously in the book, in each holds a kind of ideological middle ground, and in each is defeated. In order to understand Mailer's radical purpose, however, it is necessary to see that the same alternative to defeat exists in both struggles….

Mailer seeks to demonstrate the inability of power moralists to manipulate history in opposition to mass will. If The Naked and the Dead is taken as the accurate sum of all its parts, it must be considered, as Mailer himself has declared, a positive and hopeful book rather than a negative and pessimistic one…. More skillfully than most radical novelists Mailer has solved the problem of the ending which with artistic inevitability affirms the author's belief. Incident flowers organically into idea.

Source: Walter B. Rideout, The Radical Novel in the United States, 1900–1954: Some Interrelations of Literature and Society, Harvard University Press, 1956, pp. 270-73.

Sources

Bufithis, Philip H., Norman Mailer, Frederick Ungar, 1978.

Dempsey, David, review, in The New York Times, May 9, 1948, p. 6.

Geismar, Maxwell, review, in The Saturday Review of Literature, Vol. 31, May 8, 1948, p. 10.

Kirkus Reviews, Vol. 18, March 1, 1948, p. 126.

Lardner, John, review, in The New Yorker, Vol. 24, May 15, 1948, p. 115.

Match, Richard, review, in The New York Herald Tribune Book Review, May 9, 1948, p. 3.

Rolo, C. J., review, in The Atlantic, Vol. 188, June, 1948, p. 114.

Time, Vol. 51, May 10, 1948, p. 106.

Wasson, Donald, review, in The Library Journal, Vol. 73, May 1, 1948, p. 707.

Wolfert, Ira, review, in The Nation, Vol. 166, June 26, 1948, p. 722.

For Further Study

Alter, Robert, "The Real and Imaginary Worlds of Norman Mailer," in Motives for Fiction, Harvard University Press, 1984.

Alter discusses the novel's political themes.

Begiebing, Robert J., Acts of Regeneration: Allegory and Archetype in the Works of Norman Mailer, University of Missouri Press, 1980.

Examines the allegorical and symbolic elements in the novel.

Bufithis, Philip H., Norman Mailer, Frederick Ungar, 1978.

Bufithis studies the "naturalistic universe" of the novel.

Eisinger, Chester E., "The Naked and the Dead," edited by Jim Kamp, St. James Press, 1994, pp. 1019-020.

Eisinger argues that naturalism "directs the progress of the story from the beginning to the preordained end."

Leigh, Nigel, Radical Fictions and the Novels of Norman Mailer, St. Martin's Press, 1990.

Explores the novel's depiction of American society.

Merrill, Robert, "The Naked and the Dead: The Beast and the Seer in Man," in Norman Mailer Revisited, Twayne Publishers, 1992, pp. 11-29.

Merrill divides his study into an examination of the novel's documentary, social, and dramatic action.

Pizer, Donald, "The Naked and the Dead," in Twentieth-Century American Literary Naturalism: An Interpretation, Southern Illinois University Press, 1982, pp. 90-114.

Pizer finds a naturalistic symbolic structure in the novel.