The Naked And The Dead Analysis

Great Essays
Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead, depicts the story of a platoon of soldiers in the fight against Japan during World War II. War in pop culture is usually depicted with tons of action and has larger than life heroes. Although this may be true that war has action and heroes, very few adaptations through either film or novel, capture the psychological struggles of war on the soldiers. In times of war, soldiers have to kill other soldiers, make tough decisions on the battlefront, and even dealing with the will to survive. These types of problems are usually foreign to a new soldier when he or she is just coming from civilian life. The setting of war can have serious effects on a person. Mailer’s novel shows that the harsh setting of war can change a …show more content…
The Naked and the Dead focuses on both war and peace as its story 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 comprehend how the war has changed the lives of these men and the ones that they have left behind through the use of the “Time Machine”. The "Time Machine" sections are, in essence, flashbacks that allow us to understand how a character 's previous life in the civilian world has helped shape his present personality and behavior during the war. Roy Gallagher, a major character within the novel is used as an example of a changed man with from this war. The “Time Machine” enables the reader to see the love that he has for his wife and what happiness she had brought him. The war has made him into an angry, mean-spirited, and pessimistic man and when news of his wife dying in childbirth came around, he was

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    War has proven over a series of time that it destroys the human mind. It turns family against family, brother against brother, leaving a lasting affect on the human psych. Using literary elements, authors have a way of describing war through their writing. Liam O’Flaherty and Thomas Hardy are two examples of this. Liam O’Flaherty’s short story, “The Sniper”, and Thomas Hardy’s poem, “The Man He Killed”, contain a plot, irony, and theme to describe their thoughts on war, and can be used to state how these two pieces of writing are more different than similar.…

    • 494 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Use Of Satire In Catch 22

    • 481 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The author showed us how life was for a specific kind of person in the war and mainly focused on them. It did not show the points of view of everyone in the…

    • 481 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Although John Knowles’s novel, A Separate Peace, is set in the midst of WWII, there is a lack of the typical violence and combat associated with the war. However, Knowles uses wartime themes to depict the personal battles the protagonist is forced to face. The most prevalent of the wartimes themes present in the main characters of the novel are feelings of hostility and enmity. This demonstrates that the war, although not physically occurring with the United States, is still taking a toll on Americans. The conflict between the protagonist, Gene, and his friend, Phineas, consists of the battle each boy at the school must come to face as he grows up in a world engulfed in the war.…

    • 1774 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    O Brien Themes

    • 1005 Words
    • 5 Pages

    War can be considered one of the most traumatizing “job” in the world because of the potential it can change a human. O’Brien makes several attempts to make his message or theme clear to reader by putting direct characterization of…

    • 1005 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Krebs in Ernest Hemingway’s “Soldiers Home” and Paul in “All Quiet on the Western Front” Both showcase the perspective on the outlook of World War 1 and how they show that both characters had similar approaches on how to deal with life outside of war. Although they both had similar gist’s on the topic of World war 1, they left a different impression on soldier’s, as a whole, and how they believed war effected the life of them and what they call their “home”. Mutually, Paul Baumer and Krebs ensured the yearning of peace and minimalism, wanting the opposite of all they knew for 3+ years. When they came home, having both experienced the horrors of World War I, they began to realize that they will never be comfortable in a normal society, restraining them from “going…

    • 568 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Life during World War II was a time unlike any other. American author, John Steinbeck, gave up a life of fame and riches to follow troops around the Eastern hemisphere and document their journeys. Though there are many sources a person could go to for information about the war, Steinbeck’s account goes into great detail about what life was actually like for an American solider during the war. On his journeys, Steinbeck recorded many aspects of the war that would otherwise go unnoticed. Throughout Steinbeck’s travels, he records accounts of how soldiers adjusted to military life, how life continued during the war, and how the soldiers reacted during combat.…

    • 1231 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The horror of war is not only felt by the soldiers, but the civilians who also experience its horrors although not perhaps to its fullest extent. War does not distinguish between civilian or soldier, its horrors spread and cause physical and mental detriment. In the novel, All Quiet on…

    • 1461 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    From 1955 to 1975, American soldiers were fighting a war in Vietnam. During this time Marine Lieutenant Philip Caputo landed at Da Nang with the first ground combat unit deployed to Vietnam. Months later, having served on the line in one of history’s ugliest wars, he returned home. Physically whole but emotionally impacted, his adolescent beliefs forever gone. In his book, A Rumor Of War, Philip Caputo offers an insightful analysis regarding the psychological damages a soldier faces post-war.…

    • 1530 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    War is an emotional roller coaster; soldiers feel pain as comrade’s fall right before their eyes. They rejoice with patriotism as the army advances to defeat a common enemy. In the memoir, Helmet for My Pillow: from Parris Island to the Pacific, Robert Leckie recounts his war experience from beginning to end. He uses long- winded syntax to evoke powerful emotions from readers, provide intense imagery, and provide description of people and events. Without a doubt, long-winded syntax evokes powerful emotions from the reader.…

    • 1460 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    This novel helps to teach about the truth that lies in war, whether or not one has experienced it firsthand themselves. This novel depicts the truth of awareness of mortality. According to O’Brien, telling stories is important because they join the past with the future and they last forever, even when someone forgets it, it’s still there. He uses the metaphor, “stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story” (O’Brien, 38). This states how a story is still there despite the fact that the person who told it is not.…

    • 1170 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Tim O'Brien’s novel, The Things They Carried, eloquently (NR) demonstrates the theme of ‘beauty in horror’. The novel emphasizes this theme through the underlying foil between beauty and atrocities that are not uncommon in war stories. O'Brien focuses on the imagery of these events as well as the tone to illustrate the difficulties that soldiers are exposed to and how they have been conditioned to their situation to no longer see the horror in these horrific events rather start seeing them as beautiful events. The relevance of this theme is most prevalent in the short story, “How to Tell a True War Story.” This short story illustrates many different barbaric events that have been very beautifully illustrated.…

    • 1359 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The terrors of the Vietnam War has always frightened the people into hiding. Afraid of facing death in the eye or having your friend die in your arms. But what if there was more to the war then meets the eye? What if you were your own worst enemy? In the novel, Fallen Angels, Walter Dean Myers uses both the setting and time period to explore controversial topics.…

    • 1041 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    This shows how harmful the war was to the soldier’s psyche, where all feeling seemed to become more intense and cause them to act rashly and try and control their…

    • 798 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The lives of men in war are completely different than any ordinary day for someone not in war. They face many things that regular people couldn’t cope with. They have to worry about loud noises; the machine guns, diseases, and exploding artillery shells that often caused them to panic and lose their bearings. They only went forward because they were carried on by the force of the soldiers around them. Soldiers in war also lived with the persistent presence of death and watching people they loved die.…

    • 1033 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    After experiencing the death of his comrades and the destruction of land, Paul felt mentally injured/handicapped. He does not see a future for him without war; yet, he cannot remember his life before it. The longer he stayed, the more he hated the war and all it stood for. All these feelings reflect the author’s views on war and how he perceived the people who endured…

    • 1393 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays