374
PARTISAN REVIEW
comes most pronounced in the last third of the novel when Cum–
mings decides to send a patrol to the rear of the Japanese positions
for the purpose of determining the feasibility of a daring new plan
that he has just conceived. This decision, prompted not by the in–
terests of victory but by vanity and opportunism, results in the death
of three men and in immeasurable misery for several others-all of
it wasted. Even after the Japanese have surrendered, the patrol
(which has not yet heard the news) is still being dragged up Mt.
Anaka, again ostensibly in the interests of victory but really in order
to further the mad ambitions of the platoon sergeant, Croft.
The army, then, is evil and the individual caught in its grip has
only two basic choices: he can either submit without resistance (and
eventually be led into identifying himself with his persecutors) or he
can try to maintain at least a minimum of spiritual independence. To
be sure, there are many degrees of submission, from Stanley's abject
brown-nosing to Wilson's easy-going indifference, but only one char–
acter among the enlisted men in the book is still completely unbroken
by the time we come upon them: the ex-hobo Red Valsen.
As
for
the officers, they are all (with the exception of Hearn) willing instru–
ments of the evil power embodied in Cummings. Like Cummings and
Croft, Hearn and Valsen represent the same principle on different
levels of articulation and self-consciousness: they are rebels who do
what they have to do but who will not permit their minds or their
feelings to be drawn into collaboration with the system. The army
proves too strong even for them, however, and ultimately both men
are beaten down in much the same fashion.
Mailer's intentions are thus perfectly clear. Cummings and
Croft exemplify the army's ruthlessness and cruelty, its fierce pur–
posefulness and its irresistible will to power, while Hearn and Valsen
together make up a picture of the rebellious individual who, for
all
his
determination and courage, is finally defeated in an unequal con–
test. But no sooner do we become aware of this intention than we
notice that there are forces at work in the novel whose effect is to
subvert the general scheme. The most insidious of these, perhaps, is
Mailer's tone:
The Naked and the Dead
simply does not
sound
like
a book drawing up an angry indictment, though the things it says
explicitly provide plenty of ground for indignation. The tone, in–
deed, is rather more disinterested than partisan; it is the tone of a
man whose capacity for political indignation is inhibited by a keen
