The Naked and the Dead
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Average rating4
Based on Mailer’s own experience of military service in the Philippines during World War Two, *The Naked and the Dead* is a graphically truthful and shattering portrayal of ordinary men in battle. First published in 1949, as America was still basking in the glories of the Allied victory, it altered forever the popular perception of warfare.
Focusing on the experiences of a fourteen-man platoon stationed on a Japanese-held island in the South Pacific during World War II, and written in a journalistic style, it tells the moving story of the soldiers' struggle to retain a sense of dignity amidst the horror of warfare, and to find a source of meaning in their lives amidst the sounds and fury of battle.
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No me gustan los libros de guerra, pero este me cautivo desde el primer momento por lo humano y visceral.
En las primeras veinte páginas, poco a poco te vas sintiendo como uno de estos hombres. Comes, duermes, tomas, peleas y mueres como ellos. Lo más potente del libro son sus descripciones precisamente por lo real que se siente. Lamentablemente me carga Norman Mailer como persona, pero tengo que admitir que me gusta como escribe.
La misoginia de algunos personajes me ponía incómoda, con descripciones sexuales llenas de odio y celos. Pero todo esto es real (Mailer fue soldado en la Segunda Guerra Mundial y se inspiró de eso para este libro). Ese odio hacía las mujeres es cotidiano cuando juntas a centenares de hombres llenos de testosterona; es común que compitan por quién la tiene más grande.
En general es una imagen fidedigna no sólo de la guerra sino que también de los humanos cuando se ven siempre al borde de la muerte.
From Here to Eternity and The Thin Red Line are far superior to this book by the acclaimed Mailer. I read this first and as much as I enjoyed the banter between Hearn and Cummings it was a bit too forced. As to the end for the mission to get spooked about insects just seemed to me that Mailer was not sure how to finish the story. The Jones books restored my faith that there were some good war novels.
The Naked and the Dead is less about strategy or tactics than it is about soldiers. It's about the dynamics between commanders and their subordinates. The way men of different backgrounds deal with being placed together and forced to cooperate. The constant affronts to personal morality that war brings, and the way war pushes endurance and courage to their absolute limits. It's also about power dynamics, love and lust , and of course death.
It takes a Tolstoyian effort to sandwich that many themes between the covers of one, huge albeit, book and Mailer manages to... well, not really approach Tolstoy but he manages to weigh in as a Tolstoy-light. In the best possible way. The Naked and the Dead is easier reading than War and Peace . It has far fewer characters, settings, and scope, but it still manages to explore a lot of the same ground in a meaningful and compelling way. It's impressive, especially for a work written when Mailer was essentially just a kid.
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