The Naked and the Dead

The Beast and the Seer in Man

Authors

  • Robert Merrill University of Nevada, Reno Author

Keywords:

The Naked and the Dead, war novel, dramatic structure, Croft and Hearn, Cummings, beast and seer

Abstract

This reprint of Chapter 2 of Robert Merrill’s Norman Mailer Revisited (Twayne Publishers, 1992, pp. 11–29) argues that The Naked and the Dead has too often been valued for the wrong reasons, as combat documentary or liberal social critique. Contrasting the novel with James Jones’s The Thin Red Line, Merrill reads it instead as a unified dramatic action built on parallel conflicts between Croft and Valsen and between Cummings and Hearn. Because the “villains” suffer defeats comparable to their victims’, the ending dramatizes what Mailer called the conflict between the beast and the seer in every man.

Author Biography

  • Robert Merrill, University of Nevada, Reno

    Robert Merrill is Professor Emeritus in the Department of English at the University of Nevada at Reno. He is the author of Norman Mailer and Joseph Heller in the Twayne’s United States Authors series, as well as Critical Essays on Kurt Vonnegut, published in 1990 by G.K. Hall. Merrill received the University’s Foundation Professor Award in 1991, acknowledging his record of excellence as a teacher and scholar.

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Published

2020-10-15

Issue

Vol. 14 No. 1 (2020)

Section

Classic Interpretations

How to Cite

Merrill, Robert. “The Naked and the Dead: The Beast and the Seer in Man”. The Mailer Review, vol. 14, no. 1, Oct. 2020, pp. 250–270, https://mailerreview.org/journal/article/view/745.