The Naked and the Dead

by Norman Mailer

Book Overview

Hailed as one of the finest novels to come out of the Second World War, The Naked and the Dead received unprecedented critical acclaim upon its publication and has since become part of the American canon. This fiftieth anniversary edition features a new introduction created especially doe the occasion by Norman Mailer. Written in gritty, journalistic detail, the story follows an army platoon of foot soldiers who are fighting for the possession of...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0805005218
• ISBN13: 9780805005219
• Release Date: January 1981
• Publisher: Henry Holt & Company
• Length: 721 Pages
• Weight: 1.93 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.9" x 5.5" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Book was dirty. Not the content, the actual book.

Had to throw it out.

The first book a bought is very old and precious to me. So this one for going to my boyfriend's bi

The book is about WW2 and the pain and suffering they endure. Read the story. Not for little ones but teenagers that are into starting a career in the Army would be good for them to see what life was like . I think today's world would be a lot easier off.

an amazing book

this is historical fiction of ww 2 , and an amazing read, Mailer takes an immense interest in daily functions of troops , their emotional states and the general bureaucratic mundaneness of the assault on an isolated island in s pacific. He does in depth analysis of many features of us life in the 40s including the status of hispanic , jewish , southern and , bostonian soldiers. He is an intense and insightful writer. Many excerpts are not politically correct , including frequent sexual references, the n word but it reflects the times that were. Of interest are the long term perspectives of the General to the geopolitical status of the world, quite correctly that the focus would be on anticommunism and of a future war with russia. YOu will not put this down, so be prepared for some very emotional portions such as wilsons death in the jungle and rather gruesome details of the true cost of war,,,,,,,, from korea to midway to normandy and now in iraq.

Beautiful, sad and very lonely

Earlier this year I decided to improve the quality of the books I was reading - or, at least, to mix more "good" books in with the easy reading. The Naked and the Dead was the first of these - and what a good choice it was.Norman Mailer writes with a clarity that is often missing from other good novelists. He develops very strong characters and focusses closely on the interactions between them and their environment. Don't expect an action-packed story: The tales here are the soldier's lives and the lack of action is part of war which seems to be very realistically reconstructed.The story, for what it's worth, follows a band of recon soldiers on an island in the Pacific during World War II. The book opens with the initial assault on the Japanese-held island; it finishes with the quick and anti-climatic (deliberately so) mopping up of the last troups. In between we follow the soldiers' progress through the jungle, go with them on a desperate recon. mission, and learn about their lives through a series of personal flashbacks.We also see a full range of characters - at all levels in the army - and see their private and semi-private battles with authority. Often the authority in question is an over-demanding or idiotic superior; just as often it is an insolant, stubborn inferior. It is this interplay between the ranks that makes this novel stand out.The book seems long, but it really is a page turner up with the best of them. At the end of it, you'll be able to say you really enjoyed a work of great fiction.

formalized structure versus the individual

This appears to be the theme of Norman Mailer's writings. Time and again we revisit this construct (although the points of view, as in this novel, are wide-ranging and diverse): The Executioner's Song (an individual stand taken for self-interest and justice against the rigid laws and dictates of the prison and legal systems), Harlot's Ghost (which has much in common with The Naked and The Dead, portraying a member of the establishment, in this case the CIA, battling his personal instincts and opinions versus the cluttered organization of internal government) and this book, Mailer's first, shoving all sorts of personalities into the Army at a time of war.The book's action takes place in the moments of perception, the ideas that men at war have over the dull, teeming nights when they can't sleep and the chirp of a cricket can panic a man to shoot his machine gun or to reflect on how they resent being where they are. They think of how things could be better, of how the mistakes of their lives have led them to this moment, of the possibilities for the present and the future, and we witness their reactions to all this selfish yearning. They recall their pasts, their boyhood aspirations; they recall brief moments of happiness and reimagine their memories until even the worst things that have happened to them are recalled with the amber-coated sheen of romanticized fantasy. We race through the endless tasks of ritual and anxiety, hear the resentments, breathe their endless dissatisfaction and can almost relate when a man who's just slit another man's throat thinks first 'what is the next thing I have to do?'It is a powerful, passionate statement, a sort of grace Mailer rarely achieved later as his ambitions were realized and the brilliance of perception that was evident grew comfortable and condescending, more vexed by a need to be annoyed by another's lack of knowledge than aware that different minds see everything individually. This behavior is even precursored in the characterizations of the divergently unique personalities of the officers and clerks and generals and gods that each person sees and presumes they know based on rank and the whispered rumors about what someone else of the same rank once might actually have said.A war book, a great war book, like Tim O'Brien's Going After Cacciato, that gives the combatant and non-combatant alike a grave lesson in the dreams and realities of soldiers. All contrary opinion aside, this is a towering achievement in human understanding . . .

It only feels like it goes on forever.

There must have been a glut of war novels published in the wake of World War II, so it's indicative of the high quality of Norman Mailer's "The Naked and the Dead" that its popularity and acclaim have survived when so many others have been forgotten. What makes it so powerful is its uncompromising depiction of brutal front-line combat in scenes so well written that it's easy to forgive the book for its occasionally banal dialogue. The setting is a fictitious South Pacific island called Anopopei which is held by the Japanese. The U.S. Army has launched a campaign to take command of the island by landing six thousand troops there to confront the defensive line established by the opposing Japanese General Toyaku. Because this is fictional, I assume that the island is supposed to be a desirable strategic position because the purpose of the mission in relation to the real war is never clearly explained. In charge of the invasion is a Machiavellian General named Cummings who thinks soldiers are motivated best by fear. To defeat Toyaku's line, Cummings devises a plan tailored to the island's particular geography and assigns a reconnaissance squad to the dangerous mission, putting his rebellious and idealistic aide, Lieutenant Hearn, in charge. What the men find out is that the island's natural environment is a more formidable enemy than the Japanese could ever be. The story focuses mainly on the dozen or so men in the reconnaissance squad. Their personal backgrounds vary greatly, although their personalities don't differ so much that it's easy to tell them apart except by name. The two that stand out the most are Roth and Goldstein, two Jewish soldiers who are made to feel like outcasts due to casual anti-semitism in the squad. Short sections entitled "The Time Machine" provide glimpses of each soldier's personal history -- how they came to be what they are. They are, for the most part, normal men with understandable fears of things like being wounded or killed and the possibility of their wives' infidelity while they are gone. Reading this novel is like descending into a hellish abyss. It is very long and goes into extensive detail about all aspects of wartime life on the island: marching through the jungle in its greenhouse-like heat, hauling heavy equipment through muddy trails and over mountainous terrain, listening to the sporadic bursts of machine gun fire. The squad's treacherous reconnaissance mission is an almost Sisyphean task in which there is no honor or glory to be reaped from their efforts, just tired muscles and broken bodies. And yet they must continue onward, commanded by a cold and distant master plan that is concerned more with the gain of land than the loss of people. This is more than just a suspenseful war story; it is an eye-opening allegory about the apparent purposelessness of mankind's labor and suffering throughout history.

Mailer is a natural

Writing must come naturally to Norman Mailer. While this is his very first book, it suffers from none of the usual rookie mistakes and stands up to the very best works in Mailer's oeuvre. I dare say that very few 20th century novelists would not trade in the sum total of their work to have written this one masterpiece."The Naked and the Dead" delves deep into the heart of war as it exists in modern times, sparing us the sentimentalism and glorification that plagues most books of the war genre. I would be belittling this book's significance by even assigning it to a specific genre. True, this is a story of war, of the implications of war, the causes of war, and the impact that war has on various types of individuals, from the generals down to a platoon of privates. But first and foremost this is a story about human nature, and how human beings react when pushed to the very edge of their physical and emotional endurance.While I could go on indefinately listing this book's many favorable attributes, I will spare you my opinions and let you decide for yourself. But do read this book. Do not be put-off by its length, for anything shorter would have done a great injustice to the subject matter.Norman Mailer, may you live to be 1,000 years old.