By Michael F. Duggan
During the tense run-up to the midterms, I occasionally asked myself what novel would best describe the United States in our time. Moby Dick is perhaps the most obvious choice, and the points of comparison are legion. There is also The Lord of the Flies, but as of now, the comparison is not yet on all fours. The work that comes closest to describing the psychological backdrop of our domestic political situation may be the greatest realistic American novel to come out of the Second World War, Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead, from 1948.
The dominant current of the book is a power struggle for control of a reconnaissance platoon on a doomed mission by two alpha males. One is Lieutenant Robert Hearn, a high-minded outsider foisted on the unit from above. The other is Staff Sergeant Sam Croft, a cruel but familiar noncom who has led the unit for some time. The former is an educated rational liberal; the latter is a brutal but functional psychopath. Guess which one is still alive at the end of the story.