A true masterpiece and one of my favorite novels. Although it has all the realistic, gritty detailing that any novel recounting World War 2 Guadalcanal should have, it is so much more. The reader will indeed learn which gun is which and which rank is which. They will understand what needs to happen to take a hill. They will know what a crowded ship full of men will smell like. They will come to understand the practical intricacies of making war. But, as anyone who viewed the recent version of the film will know, the story is not one based on narrative but one based on a specific philosophy: we are all, as humans, forever destined to never truly understand one another, we are forever destined to never truly achieve the kind of empathetic meeting of heart & mind & soul that we may yearn for - a yearning we may not understand or even recognize. War is, if it is anything, an insane metaphor for that lack of understanding, that true lack of connection, and to be a part of that metaphor is to be, in a way, as insane.This is a novel of many voices, each individualized and each specifically unique and amusingly detailed. And yet there is a similarity to the themes that emerge from the thoughts of each of the characters, whether they are trying to understand their brothers, their girls back home, their commanders, their enemy, their next target, or the war itself: the feeling of distance. It is a melancholy and confusing feeling. Each one blunders through his life in his own way, barely grasping what is happening around him, barely grasping what is happening inside himself as well. The novel is epic in its depiction of war, but it is intimate in its depiction of the levels of mystery within each of us and between us as well.It is surprisingly funny at times. James Jones has a mordant voice and he knows the ridiculousness of men, how amusing our little concerns and irritations and idiosyncrasies can be when depicted at times gently but more often pointedly. He also knows that throwing dozens upon dozens of characters in the narrative will confuse and annoy the lazy reader – but how else to illustrate the confusion of wartime? The coming and going of bodies, of places, of times that all blur together. Jones himself was a WW2 veteran, and so the details are impressively laid out – but what is even more impressive is the poetic, sorrowful mourning that is suffused throughout the novel, one that builds and builds and builds. It is hard to imagine the number of his fellows he saw slain, and how it impacted him. But beyond that, to see the melancholy within the man, not just the soldier, not just the circumstance? He is the rare author I would love to have known, and yet the idea of his experience and his sadness is so intimidating, it makes me feel like less of a grown man when thinking of the person who could write all of this down. What have I done in my life in comparison?It is interesting to compare the film with the novel. The theme of the distance between humans is there, as is the idea of many narrative voices recounting many different things but all ending in despair over our lack of ability to truly understand ourselves, the world, each other. But Malick widens the melancholy even further by including his usual theme of man’s distance from nature as well. It works beautifully. Two character differences stand out: Pvt Witt and Cpl Fife. In the film, Pvt Witt is played by James Caviezel as a beatific savior of men, spiritually connected to nature and prone to daring displays of bravery. In the novel, Witt is a spiteful hick, also prone to daring displays of bravery, but also an unrepentant racist towards all non-whites, and is filled to the brim with petty contempt towards all forms of authority. I like both portraits, but the novel’s Witt seems so much more human, so much more real. You don’t have to be a saint or even particularly likeable to be brave, to save lives, to accomplish daring deeds, to be loveable. He is a hero, ignorant redneck and all, precisely because he is not particularly heroic in thought – only in deed. He comes through, again and again.In the film, Cpl Fife is reduced to a couple cameos by Adrien Brody, standing distraught by a soldier’s corpse or looking terrified during a river crossing. In the novel, he is so much more: a dissection of the falseness of the concept of “cowardice” during war. He is full of fear, he calls himself a coward, each path he chooses is one that has self-protection at its core; and yet his depiction is entirely sympathetic and rational: what sane man isn’t a coward when it comes to the insanity of war? Who wants it, who wants to be in it? It is not something to run to, it is something to run from. Fife is the secret hero of The Thin Red Line, the rational man not understanding the irrational world around him, and rejecting any attempt to bend him to that irrational world’s rules. I can see how that character would not translate successfully to audiences yearning for heroes, and so Fife in his entirety barely makes it to the screen.The book’s great success may not just be in its depiction of the distance between humans, but in the illustration of war as the ultimate insanity. As we all know, World War 2 was the Good War, the one in which we all should be proud, the one with truly golden heroes and truly evil villains, the one we all are glad was fought and would have fought in if we could. We had the right reasons after all; at least that is my own perspective. But a good war is still war, and war entails the deaths of the young, the destruction of lives and of love, of cities and of countryside, of innocence, of tradition, of everything. So why do we love it so?
Longest book I've read.Not one of my favorites because I'm not interested in tactics of which hill they decided to go on, didn't care about the hills. Wish more time had been spent on certain characters. There were too many characters and I wanted there to be more focus on a few. Liked the various responses to combat. But it seemed that there was too much of a list of all the types of things that would happen to people while in combat. Lots of where's my next drink, which was probably honest but sad, and the lengths they would go to get alcohol was also sad. Lots of prisoner abuse and maybe too much stuff you'd expect. So, I did run out of energy reading the story but took notes and got some very good quotes about people being actors and about courage. It gets 4 stars because it is honest. It is bloody, but not so much that you will have nightmares. It makes the point of how brutal and cruel one can be in a battle situation. It does not get 5 stars because it's not my style and I didn't want to get into the Hill number this, hill number that tactics. I do read war novels and probably would appreciate Norman Mailer's "The Naked and the Dead" he's more mellifluous and better with imagery and deeper with emotion in his style I tend to think and have plenty of others on my list.I never thought of Malaria and illness, lack of water, the heat, and the loss of glasses, theft of arms, crap food and other hardships they would have to go through. I like the various reactions people would have to combat and who would thrive and who would not thrive and the fact that James Jones was able to represent many different types of characters reactions.It did not get 3 stars, even though it felt too long and tedious in parts, but not that tedious because I read roughly 100 pages towards the end very quickly, because it is controversial, honest and some of it was unique. Also, I feel that it's just that this particular book might just not be for me, but great for others who are interested in the tactics of battle. I've seen or heard so much about battle situations that some of the scenes wereb to be expected.Glad he put in stuff about homosexuality in war and that there is a rerelease of "From Here to Eternity" which includes content from his original draft of that book which was deleted by his editors which includes homosexuality. I intend to read that book in part because he has shown himself to be respectful in his treatment of the topic.
What do You think about The Thin Red Line (1998)?
Let’s start with the names of the soldiers: Big Queen, Buck Sergeant Doll, Shorty Tall. Then move on to the soldiers’ names for their battle sites: The Giant Boiled Shrimp, The Sea Slug, Boola Boola. In vivid strokes like these, Jones brings intimacy, humor, and authenticity to his story of the U.S. invasion of Guadalcanal, told from the viewpoints of a handful of combat troops in C-for-Charlie Company. This book gives a reader so much to gnaw on: What is a soldier? What makes a good one? Can soldiering be judged by actions or by state of mind? The tension between each soldier’s inner psyche, outer posturing, and spontaneous response to external events is what makes the characters so rich and empathetic. We bear witness to paradox: the obsessive agony of the young husband who yearns for his wife even as he grows certain that he is a cuckold; the shame of the young clerk who is convinced of his own cowardice even as his courage is proven; and each soldier’s utter surprise—even exhilaration—at what he finds himself capable of, for good and for bad. Especially refreshing are moments of “happy maleness.” Despite the solitary nature of each man’s struggle, this is not a book about the isolation and alienation of the modern soldier. From the opening paragraph on, you feel the vulnerability and casual unity of the entire company; they are like one person, thrumming with anxiety and aspirations.
—Emily
If I saw this in a bookshop, the likelihood is I'd walk straight past it without a second glance. I have little to no prior experience with 'war writing' (I'm not sure whether to count The Book Thief) - something like this isn't the kind of thing I'd normally read, but I'm so glad I did!I won't go into too much detail about the plot (no spoilers!), but the basic premise of the novel is that it follows a group of US troops, 'C-for-Charlie Company', and depicts their experiences during the Guadalcanal campaign in World War Two. The book goes to some pretty dark places; at times it can be very violent and unsettling, and there's a lot of profanity and sexual references. If this doesn't bother you, then I would definitely recommend it!Things I liked- How realistic everything was.-- Jones evidently knew what he was writing about; he makes a military campaign that might otherwise have been boring translate perfectly onto the page. The narrative is constantly moving, even in the quieter moments; when the action finishes with one character, a seamless transition in the omniscient POV takes us to another member of the company, and the story continues.-- This allows Jones to show us all aspects of military life. Although the combat scenes were well done, I personally preferred seeing what the troops got up to in their free time. Some of the moments when they were roaring drunk genuinely made me smile.-- The characters are so well drawn you can easily believe they are/were real people. I wasn't really expecting to get attached to the characters, since I was reading it purely for a school assignment and wasn't sure how much it would engage me, but there was one particular moment (view spoiler)[just before Chapter 7 (hide spoiler)]
—Megan Openshaw
Somehow I was expecting more of this book after having watched the Terrence Malick film based on it. I really enjoyed the setup, through the taking of the Big Dancing Elephant. The characters felt like genuine portrayals of the kind of men you would expect to find under fire, in WWII or maybe even today in Afghanistan. Their personalities spoke directly to the way they coped with fighting a war for the first time -- whether it was a 'fake it til you make it' strategy, ruthless glory hunting, or the exploration of the almost sexual feeling that adrenaline gives a person.That was exceptionally interesting, but I suppose I had hoped that at least a couple characters would use their experiences to propose competing notions of the human good, the meaning of life, or something like that. The closest thing the reader gets to that is cynicism about the illusion of freedom in American society (although I most say Fife's rants about how the notion of cowardice forms a prison for these men was pretty interesting) and an unflinching argument that all human conflict is based on property.I suppose my disappointment with the lack of life-affirming messages in this novel is meant to reflect the disappointment of the men who fought. They were the objects of trumped up propaganda espousing the glory and honor of war, and all they found on the battlefield was a totally senseless dice game where good and bad men alike were utterly destroyed by the calculated hand of fate. In the end, they fought hard only for the men beside them, and I only kept turning the page to see what would happen to the fully-realized and likable characters.That's quite a trick.
—Chris Chester
