Tragedy, Trauma, and the Modern

The American Civil War in The Naked and the Dead and Across the River and Into the Trees

Authors

  • James H. Meredith Capella University Author

Keywords:

modern tragedy, cultural trauma, American cultural criticism, existential philosophy, violence and identity, postwar American literature

Abstract

Allusions to the American Civil War informs Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead and Ernest Hemingway’s Across the River and into the Trees. Both novelists understood the historical importance the Civil War had on the modern psyche and modernist literature. Both novelists understood the impact of war on the individuals who fight in them and who enter into battle and how that ripples throughout history and modern life.

Author Biography

  • James H. Meredith, Capella University

    James H. Meredith is currently a member of the Core Faculty at Capella University. He earned a PhD in English from the University of Georgia and served as the Faculty President at the United States Air Force Academy in 1999, where he taught for 15 years, earning the rank of Professor in 2000. His academic training is in twentieth-century literature, with an emphasis in American literature. He has lectured nationally and internationally, most notably on Ernest Hemingway and F . Scott Fitzgerald. He is the recipient of two Hemingway Research Grants from the John F . Kennedy Library and garnered honorable mention twice for the McDermott Award for Research Excellence from the Air Force Academy, the first officer from the Humanities to ever win such awards. Dr. Meredith is the president of the International Ernest Hemingway Foundation and Society.

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Published

2026-03-25

Issue

Vol. 4 No. 1 (2010): Literary Warriors

Section

Articles