Literature: Mailer, "The Naked and the Dead" Revisited by Veteran
Posted by: "Hal "Phoenix" Muskat"
phoenix@rainbowpuddle.com phoenixplaya2004
Fri Nov 16, 2007 7:21 am (PST)
Martin Smith: Norman Mailer and the "Good War"
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<link>>
<link>Sgt. Martin Smith is a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War. He can
be reached at:
martin@ivaw.org----------------------------------------------------------_
_Norman Mailer and the "Good War"
A Veteran Re-Reads _The Naked and the Dead_
By MARTIN SMITH/CounterPunch
The media memorialized Norman Mailer after his death last week with
accolades about his stature as a literary giant, two Pulitzer Prizes,
larger-than-life celebrity persona and reputation as an egotistical
curmudgeon. But the substance of his ideas and his life beyond the image
and the awards got little attention.
Mailer grew up in a working-class family in Brooklyn. His life was
shaped by his service in the Army in the Philippines and during the
Second World War, and the disaffection he felt. He identified with the
1950s beat counterculture and 1960s antiwar movement, both in his
writing and as a participant in social protests.
Mailer's political engagement came through in non-fiction books like?
Armies of the Night, St. George and the Godfather and Miami and the
Siege of Chicago, which combined journalism with his own highly personal
reflections as a participant-observer in the tumultuous protests of the
antiwar movement.
Also missing from many mainstream tributes to Mailer was any
acknowledgement of his disturbing streak of sexism. Mailer cultivated a
"macho" image and declared himself an enemy of the women's liberation
movement. In his rants against feminism, he attempted to justify
opposition to birth control, and he blamed the struggle for equality for
destroying the "mystery" of sex.
EACH OBITUARY did at least mention _The Naked and the Dead_, Mailer's
first and most important novel. It is one of the great antiwar classics
in literature and a book that speaks to all activists committed to
ending the brutality of wars for empire.
Yet The Naked and the Dead is barely known today outside of academic
circles--because it challenges the standard assumptions about the Second
World War as "the good war," and unmasks the hidden motives of U.S.
involvement.
The Naked and the Dead is the story of a suicide mission by a
reconnaissance patrol that is ordered to assess a Japanese rear position
on the island of Anopopei. If the soldiers survive and return, General
Cummings plans to send out a company for a surprise attack, a daring
tactical move that would likely lead to his promotion.
However, from the beginning, the mission is fraught with problems. Lt.
Hearn, the newly assigned platoon commander, has no field experience;
Wilson, married with a daughter, has contracted a painful case of
gonorrhea and can barely function; and anti-Semitism directed at Roth
and Goldstein divides the platoon.
Other obstacles develop as tensions mount between Lt. Hearn and Staff
Sgt. Croft over leadership of the platoon. Fatalities, a near mutiny,
exhaustion and finally a furious hornets' attack cause the mission to be
aborted.
Nakedness is a theme throughout the work. Mailer, in his distinctive
realist style, undresses the characters and reveals the material
conditions behind their motivations and fears.
Mailer shows how the grunts in Staff Sgt. Croft's platoon elected to
join the Army not out of a patriotic fervor to fight fascism, but
because of dire circumstances and the lack of opportunities at home. As
Gallagher, an Irish Catholic from South Boston, bragged to one woman,
"I'm tired of my job, I'm getting' a better one...Something big...I'm on
my way, I'm going places."
Others have joined the military to escape. Red, for example, grew up in
a company-run mining town in Montana and lost his father in a mining
accident. He decides while working at a flophouse to join up rather than
get married.
Similarly, Martinez, a Mexican American from San Antonio, gets Rosalita
pregnant and enlists. He ultimately finds himself reliving the racism he
experiences in the civilian world, as he weeds the officers' yards and
serves as a houseboy at their parties.
After spending time on Anopopei and in the Pacific theater, many of the
soldiers begin to question the true motive behind capturing a desolate
island from the Japanese. As Red ponders, "Of course, they died in vain,
any GI knew the score. The war's just t.s. [tough shit] to them who had
to fight it."
In a dramatic scene, one member of the platoon, Wilson, dies from a
stomach wound. Symbolic of the deeper feelings of loss and despair among
many, another platoon member, Ridges, weeps "from exhaustion and failure
and the shattering naked conviction that nothing mattered."
Red expresses the feeling that many of the soldiers have come to hold
about the war: "What have I got against the goddamn Japs? You think I
care if they keep this fuggin' jungle? What's it to me if Cummings gets
another star?"
MAILER POINTS out the stark differences between the working-class troops
and their officers. As in all wars, "workers in uniform" must labor for
generals who are out for promotion and popularity, rather than
protecting the welfare of their men. "They slept with mud and insects
and worms," Mailer writes, "while the officers bitched because there
were no paper napkins, and the chow could stand improvement."
In particular, the character of General Cummings, with his silk
monogrammed handkerchiefs, represents the emerging military-industrial
complex.
At one point, Cummings divides the meat rations to the unit so that half
go to the 180 enlisted men--and the other half to the 38 officers.
Cummings explains his grander purpose: "Break them down. Every time an
enlisted man sees an officer get an extra privilege, it breaks him down
a little more...they also fear us more...Every time there's what you
call an Army injustice, the enlisted man involved is confirmed a little
more in the idea of his own inferiority."
Thus, Mailer lays bare the class realities that separate the officers
and the enlisted men and challenges the idea that all Americans were
united for a common cause.
In a series of dialogues between General Cummings and Lt. Hearn, Mailer
reveals the twisted ideology of the ruling class. "There's one thing
about power," Cummings explains. "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."
This attitude, still prevalent among the generals and war planners to
this day, explains the mindset behind the atrocities committed by the
U.S. and other Allied powers during the war--such as the terror bombing
of the German city of Dresden, which killed more than 100,000 people,
mostly civilians, and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
which killed more than 210,000 people instantly, with another 130,000
dead from radiation and illness over the next five years.
The terror unleashed by the U.S. during the war is accepted today as a
necessary evil, committed in the goal of fighting fascism. Yet the U.S.
had deeper war aims. As General Cummings explains to Lt. Hearn about
"the good war":
For the past century, the entire historical process has been working
toward greater and greater consolidation of power...Your men of power in
America...are becoming conscious of their real aims for the first time
in our history. Watch. After the war, our foreign policy is going to be
far more naked, far less hypocritical than it has ever been. We're no
longer going to cover our eyes with our left hand while our right is
extending an imperialist paw.
The General and policymakers like him are the product of a system that
has always created--and will continue to create--atrocities and war crimes.
If you're looking for a brilliant novel that debunks the mythology of
"the good war," read Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead. You'll
discover a book that the Bushes, the Clintons and the Obamas, with their
talk of potential nuclear threats from Iran and Pakistan and an endless
"war on terror," would prefer to bury.
_
_c2007 CounterPunch
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