NORMAN MAILER
375
sense of the world as a very complicated place, not easily to be under–
stood by grand formulas. And the strength of this sense manifests it–
self unmistakably in Mailer's treatment of Valsen and Hearn, who
tum out to be less sympathetic than their role in the general scheme
would seem to require, just as Cummings and Croft somehow develop
into more admirable figures than they were ever meant to be.
Heam, the rich Harvard graduate, and Valsen, the penniless
hobo, have a great deal in common. They are both incapable of at–
taching themselves to anything or anyone, and they share the nihilistic
belief that "everything is crapped up, everything
is
phony, every–
thing curdles when you touch it." Their rebellion against the system
is sterile and ineffective, for it involves nothing more than a deter–
mination to preserve their "inviolate freedom," as Hearn puts it,
"from ... the wants and sores that caught up everybody [else]." What
Mailer tells us in a key passage about Hearn is also true of Valsen:
"The only thing to do
is
to get by on style. He had said that once,
lived by it in the absence of anything else. . . . The only thing that
had been important was to let no one in any ultimate issue ever vio–
late your integrity." Style without content, a vague ideal of personal
integrity, a fear of attachment, and a surly nihilistic view of the
world are not enough to save a man
in
the long run from the likes
of Cummings and Croft, and certainly not enough to endow him
with heroic stature-and Mailer knows it. His desperate effort to re–
deem Hearn toward the end comes too late and in any case lacks
conviction: perhaps the weakest passage in the whole novel
is
the
one dealing with Hearn's decision on the night before he is killed to
resign his commission and take a principled stand against everything
that Cummings represents.
The same desperation shows through Mailer's effort to deflate
Cummings and Croft. Like Valsen and Hearn, the platoon sergeant
and the general have so much in common that they seem to be the
same person in two different incarnations. They are both immensely
competent; they are both very brave; they are both contemptuous
of weakness; they both suffer from a sexually determined hunger to
dominate. Most important of all, what they are both pursuing is the
dream of absolute freedom, the dream of exercising will without ob–
struction or limit. Man, Cummings tells Hearn,
is
a being "in transit
between brute and God," and
his
deepest urge is to "achieve God."
It
is
this
urge that drives Croft to drag the platoon up Mt. Anaka,
