The Naked and the Dead

Set during the height of the Pacific campaign during WW2 Norman Mailer's debut semi-autobiographical 1948 war novel describes the invasion of the fictional Japanese held island of Anopopei through the eyes of General Cumming who commands a n Infantry Division, his aide Lieutenant Hearn with whom the General has a strained love/hate relationship and the men of a tight knit recon platoon led by the psychopathic Texan Sergeant Croft. His men include Red, a headstrong loner, Wilson, a loveable buffoon, Roth and Goldstein, a secular and observant Jew respectively who are both victims of casual antisemitism, Gallagher, an embittered racist Boston-Irishman and Martinez, an introverted but courageous Mexican American scout among other types who correspond to the diverse emigrant ethnic religious and political make up and explosive tensions of mid 20th century America. The men are paranoid about losing face in front of their peers, terrified of death, thirsty for alcohol, exhausted by their physical environment, resentful of authority and lust after absent women they fear, love and despise from the remove of the exclusively male world of the combat soldier.

After the initial landings which push the Japanese deep into the jungle the men of the platoon are put to work building a road to facilitate the advance up a peninsula toward the Japanese line ahead of a final decisive push which will earn the victory hungry Cumming the glory he demands. However the General becomes frustrated as this pause causes his campaign to stagnate questioning his manhood, focusing his impotent wrath on the insolent insubordinate Hearn who is banished to command the recon platoon on a perilous mission behind enemy lines much to the ire of the tyrannical Croft...

Mailer is unsparing in visceral detail especially in several shocking graphic combat scenes and cynically meditates on how war rips civilized men from the lives they once knew and throws them into a pitiless meat-grinder where only basic survival matters. WW2 myths of a just war, the humble GI as the embodiment of valour and heroism and the ultimate triumph of good over evil are cruelly exposed as sentimental nonsense by an author who saw it for himself.