Automatons and the Atomic Abyss

The Naked and the Dead

Authors

  • Erin Mercer Victoria University of Wellington Author

Keywords:

The Naked and the Dead, the uncanny in literature, mechanization and dehumanization, atomic age anxiety, World War II literature, conformity and Cold War culture, technology and warfare

Abstract

Norman Mailer’s ostensibly realist text in The Naked and the Dead is complicated by its depiction of mechanical soldiers who are plagued with superstitions regarding death and filled with dread provoked by an oddly menacing environment. This conscious use of the uncanny illustrates popular postwar concerns connected with conformity and totalitarianism, but the real strangeness of The Naked and the Dead relies on its ability to reveal unconscious fears connected with Mailer’s personal uncertainties regarding his writing and cultural unease about the atomic bomb.

Author Biography

  • Erin Mercer, Victoria University of Wellington

    Erin Mercer is a PhD candidate at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Her thesis explores uncanny American literature produced in the first decade following 1945 and she is currently co-authoring a book on the gothic in New Zealand twentieth-century literature. Her most recent publication is an article on Paula Morris’ Hibiscus Coast, published in Floating World: Essays on Contemporary New Zealand Fiction (co-edited by Anna Jackson and Jane Stafford).

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Published

2026-03-25

Issue

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

Section

Articles