about the "average Joe" and the
"common man." To a large ex–
tent they are responsible for the
new trends in popular taste be–
cause they are themselves the very
begetters of our leading practition–
ers of popular culture, the Dore
Scharys, the Stanley Kramers, the
Irwin Shaws.
Consider how
The Caine Mu–
tiny
meets the needs of this great
audience. The American wartime
experience is refracted through
the eyes of Willie Keith, who
might be described as the average
American rich boy whom we have
come to know from the writings of
J.
P. Marquand and even
F.
Scott
Fitzgerald (there is in some ways
a remarkable similarity between
Amory Blaine or Anthony Patch
and Willie): a home on Long
Island, another house in Palm
Beach, four years at Princeton,
a small talent for versifying and
piano playing, a domineering
mother, a love affair with a poor
but
honest Italian night club sing–
er, and finally a leap into navy
officers' school to avoid the draft.
In the navy, however, he is simply
a reserve officer, a member of
that
middle segment of wartime
lOCiety that lords it over the en–
listed
man and lives in fear, ad–
miration and bewilderment of the
regular navy career officer. Willie
accepts assignment to a rusty old
minesweeper, the
Caine,
which is
commanded by Captain Quceg,
an Annapolis man. It is soon
apparent to everyone that Queeg
249
is at best a tyrannical martinet and
at worst a psychopath. A series of
small but nasty incidents, de–
scribed in lengthy and convincing
detail, persuades Willie and his
fellow reserve officers that Queeg
is a coward, an unbalanced dis–
ciplinarian, and finally a madman.
In some of the most interesting
pages of the book, the officers of
the
Caine
discuss Captain Queeg
in an attempt to decide whether
he is mad or simply vicious. It is
Lieutenant Thomas Keefer, intel–
lectual, playwright, and budding
war novelist, who first discovers
the obscure naval regulations pro–
viding for the replacement of men–
tally or physically incapacitated
commanding officers through a
kind of legal mutiny. He plants
in the mind of Lieutenant Maryk,
a stolid and competent peacetime
fisherman, the seed that grows in–
to a conviction of Queeg's insan–
ity. But when Maryk gets Keefer
to accompany him to Admiral
Halsey's office to plead for
Queeg's replacement, Keefer begs
off at the last possible moment
with the explanation that their
proof is insufficient and subject to
misinterpretation. Neither Willie
nor any of his fellow reserve of–
ficers from whose point of view
Captain Queeg is observed can
think of him apart from his role
a~
navy officer. A fine line divides
them from Queeg and his Annap–
olis c1ubmates, who are described
as either fantastically tyrannical
(Queeg) or infinitely wise, exper-
