The Journey To Redemption: A Study Of The Violence In Norman Mailer's The Naked And The Dead

The Naked and the Dead,as Norman Mailer's first and representative work,is not only the most classical war fiction,but also the most controversial work since World War II.The war is used as a background to explore various problems emerging in American society.Under the shadow of totalitarianism in the U.S.Army,the characters in the novel all suffer from the loss of humanity.Some of the soldiers are transformed to war machines with neither free will nor identity.By analyzing the reasons in forming personal violence,this thesis aims at arguing that nevertheless the violence under the shadow of totalitarianism has a negative effect on human nature,it still has positive significance.The thesis further proposes that violence may lead the soldiers onto the journey of redemption.Though The Naked and the Dead is a war fiction,Mailer focuses on detailing the struggles inside soldiers' minds and the violence in the army rather than the battle scenes.At last,from the changes of Croft during his five times' confrontations with Mount Anaka and the two other characters' return of their free will and identity in overcoming their malign thoughts during escorting injured Wilson under such harsh war and natural condition,we can conclude that some soldiers can still have the possibility of being redeemed even living under the shadow of totalitarianism and violence.