“The Naked and the Dead”

[Excerpt from unpublished 1942 play]

Authors

  • Norman Mailer Author

Keywords:

unpublished play, dramatic writing, Boston State Hospital, institutional violence, archival materials, power and authority, early Mailer, American drama

Abstract

This previously unpublished excerpt from Norman Mailer’s 1942 play The Naked and the Dead presents a scene set in the hydrotherapy ward of Boston State Hospital, dramatizing the daily operations of institutional power, coercion, and moral compromise. Written while Mailer was still an undergraduate and employed as an attendant at the hospital, the scene anticipates many of the ethical and political concerns that would later define his fiction and nonfiction. Through sharply drawn dialogue and escalating violence, the excerpt explores the psychological effects of authority on both patients and staff, revealing how systems of control normalize cruelty and erode moral judgment. Published here for the first time with Mailer’s permission, the excerpt offers rare insight into the formative stage of Mailer’s literary imagination and complements Robert F. Lucid’s biographical essay on the circumstances of its composition.

Author Biography

  • Norman Mailer

    Norman Mailer (1923–2007) was one of the most influential and contentious American writers of the postwar period. A novelist, journalist, essayist, filmmaker, and public intellectual, Mailer emerged with The Naked and the Dead (1948), a landmark World War II novel, and went on to produce a body of work that consistently tested the boundaries between fiction, history, and reportage. Central to the development of what came to be called New Journalism, his nonfiction works include The Armies of the Night (1968), which won the Pulitzer Prize, and The Executioner’s Song (1979), which earned a second Pulitzer. Across genres, Mailer’s writing confronts power, violence, masculinity, politics, and the American imagination with sustained ambition and formal experimentation.

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Published

2026-01-25

Issue

Vol. 1 No. 1 (2007): Inaugural Issue

Section

Works by Norman Mailer

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