The Naked and the Dead

by Norman Mailer

Genres: War & Military; Literary Fiction

Synopsis

Hailed as one of the finest novels to come out of the Second World War, The Naked and the Dead received unprecedented critical acclaim upon its publication and has since become part of the American canon. This fiftieth anniversary edition features a new introduction created especially for the occasion by Norman Mailer.

Written in gritty, journalistic detail, the story follows an army platoon of foot soldiers who are fighting for the possession of the Japanese-held island of Anopopei. Composed in 1948, The Naked and the Dead is representative of the best in twentieth-century American writing.

Release date: August 5, 2000

Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

Print pages: 722

Sample

1

NOBODY COULD sleep. When morning came, assault craft would be lowered and a first wave of troops would ride through the surf and charge ashore on the beach at Anopopei. All over the ship, all through the convoy, there was a knowledge that in a few hours some of them were going to be dead.

*   *   *

A soldier lies flat on his bunk, closes his eyes, and remains wide-awake. All about him, like the soughing of surf, he hears the murmurs of men dozing fitfully. “I won’t do it, I won’t do it,” someone cries out of a dream, and the soldier opens his eyes and gazes slowly about the hold, his vision becoming lost in the intricate tangle of hammocks and naked bodies and dangling equipment. He decides he wants to go to the head, and cursing a little, he wriggles up to a sitting position, his legs hanging over the bunk, the steel pipe of the hammock above cutting across his hunched back. He sighs, reaches for his shoes, which he has tied to a stanchion, and slowly puts them on. His bunk is the fourth in a tier of five, and he climbs down uncertainly in the half-darkness, afraid of stepping on one of the men in the hammocks below him. On the floor he picks his way through a tangle of bags and packs, stumbles once over a rifle, and makes his way to the bulkhead door. He passes through another hold whose aisle is just as cluttered, and finally reaches the head.

Inside the air is steaming. Even now a man is using the sole fresh-water shower, which has been occupied ever since the troops have come on board. The soldier walks past the crap games in the unused salt-water shower stalls, and squats down on the wet split boards of the latrine. He has forgotten his cigarettes and he bums one from a man sitting a few feet away. As he smokes he looks at the black wet floor littered with butts, and listens to the water sloshing through the latrine box. There has been really no excuse for coming, but he continues to sit on the box because it is cooler here, and the odor of the latrine, the brine, the chlorine, the clammy bland smell of wet metal is less oppressive than the heavy sweating fetor of the troop holds. The soldier remains for a long time, and then slowly he stands up, hoists his green fatigue pants, and thinks of the struggle to get back to his bunk. He knows he will lie there waiting for the dawn and he says to himself, I wish it was time already, I don’t give a damn, I wish it was time already. And as he returns, he is thinking of an early morning in his childhood when he had lain awake because it was to be his birthday and his mother had promised him a party.

*   *   *

Early that evening Wilson and Gallagher and Staff Sergeant Croft had started a game of seven card stud with a couple of orderlies from headquarters platoon. They had grabbed the only empty place on the hold deck where it was possible to see the cards once the lights were turned off. Even then they were forced to squint, for the only bulb still lit was a blue one near the ladder, and it was difficult to tell the red suits from the black. They had been playing for hours, and by now they were in a partial stupor. If the hands were unimportant, the betting was automatic, almost unconscious.

Wilson’s luck had been fair from the very beginning, but after one series in which he had taken three pots in a row it had become phenomenal. He was feeling very good. There was a stack of Australian pound notes scattered sloppily and extravagantly under his crossed legs, and while he felt it was bad luck to count his money, he knew he must have won nearly a hundred pounds. It gave him a thick lustful sensation in his throat, the kind of excitement he received from any form of abundance. “Ah tell ya,” he announced to Croft in his soft southern voice, “this kind of money is gonna be the ruination of me yet. Ah never will be able to figger out these goddam pounds. The Aussies work out everythin’ backwards.”

Croft gave no answer. He was losing a little, but, more annoying, his hands had been drab all night.

Gallagher grunted scornfully. “What the hell! With your kind of luck you don’t have to figure your money. All you need is an arm to pick it up with.”

Wilson giggled. “That’s right, boy, but it’s gonna have to be a mighty powerful arm.” He laughed again with an easy, almost childish glee and began to deal. He was a big man about thirty years old with a fine mane of golden-brown hair, and a healthy ruddy face whose large features were formed cleanly. Incongruously, he wore a pair of round silver-rimmed glasses which gave him at first glance a studious or, at least, a methodical appearance. As he dealt his fingers seemed to relish the teasing contact of the cards. He was daydreaming about liquor, feeling rather sad because with all the money he had now, he couldn’t even buy a pint. “You know,” he laughed easily, “with all the goddam drinkin’ Ah’ve done, Ah still can’t remember the taste of it unless Ah got the bottle right with me.” He reflected for a moment, holding an undealt card in his hand, and then chuckled. “It’s just like lovin’. When a man’s got it jus’ as nice and steady as he wants it, well, then he never can remember what it’s like without it. And when he ain’t got it, they ain’t nothin’ harder than for him to keep in mind what a pussy feels like. They was a gal Ah had once on the end of town, wife of a friend of mine, and she had one of the meanest rolls a man could want. With all the gals Ah’ve had, Ah’ll never forget that little old piece.” He shook his head in tribute, wiped the back of his hand against his high sculptured forehead, brought it up over his golden pompadour, and chuckled mirthfully. “Man,” he said softly, “it was like dipping it in a barrel of honey.” He dealt two cards face down to each man, and then turned over the next round.

For once Wilson’s hand was poor, and after staying a round because he was the heavy winner, he dropped out. When the campaign was over, he told himself, he was going to drum up some way of making liquor. There was a mess sergeant over in Charley Company who must have made two thousand of them pounds the way he sold a quart for five pounds. All a man needed was sugar and yeast and some of them cans of peaches or apricots. In anticipation he felt a warm mellow glow in his chest. Why, you could even make it with less. Cousin Ed, he remembered, had used molasses and raisins, and his stuff had been passing decent.

For a moment, though, Wilson was dejected. If he was going to fix himself any, he would have to steal all the makings from the mess tent some night, and he’d have to find a place to hide it for a couple of days. And then he’d need a good little nook where he could leave the mash. It couldn’t be too near the bivouac or anybody might be stumbling onto it, and yet it shouldn’t be too far if a man wanted to siphon off a little in a hurry.

There was just gonna be a lot of problems to it, unless he waited till the campaign was over and they were in permanent bivouac. But that was gonna take too long. It might even be three or four months. Wilson began to feel restless. There was just too much figgering a man had to do if he wanted to get anything for himself in the Army.

Gallagher had folded early in that hand too, and was looking at Wilson with resentment. It took somebody like that dumb cracker to win all the big pots. Gallagher’s conscience was bothering him. He had lost thirty pounds at least, almost a hundred dollars, and, while most of it was money he had won earlier on this trip, that did not excuse him. He thought of his wife, Mary, now seven months pregnant, and tried to remember how she looked. But all he could feel was a sense of guilt. What right did he have to be throwing away money that should have been sent to her? He was feeling a deep and familiar bitterness; everything turned out lousy for him sooner or later. His mouth tightened. No matter what he tried, no matter how hard he worked, he seemed always to be caught. The bitterness became sharper, flooded him for a moment. There was something he wanted, something he could feel and it was always teasing him and disappearing. He looked at one of the orderlies, Levy, who was shuffling the cards, and Gallagher’s throat worked. That Jew had been having a lot of goddam luck, and suddenly his bitterness changed into rage, constricted in his throat, and came out in a passage of dull throbbing profanity. “All right, all right,” he said, “how about giving the goddam cards a break. Let’s stop shuffling the fuggers and start playing.” He spoke with the flat ugly “a” and withered “r” of the Boston Irish, and Levy looked up at him, and mimicked, “All right, I’ll give the caaads a break, and staaart playing.”

“Pretty fuggin funny,” Gallagher muttered half to himself. He was a short man with a bunched wiry body that gave the impression of being gnarled and sour. His face, in character with this, was small and ugly, pocked with the scars of a severe acne which had left his skin lumpy, spotted with swatches of purple-red. Perhaps it was the color of his face, or it might have been the shape of his long Irish nose, which slanted resentfully to the side, but he always looked wroth. Yet, he was only twenty-four.

The seven of hearts was showing. He looked cautiously at his two buried cards, discovered both of them were also hearts, and allowed himself a little hope. He hadn’t had a flush all night, and he told himself he was due. “Even they can’t fug me this time,” he thought.

Wilson bet a pound, and Gallagher raised him. “All right, let’s make this a decent pot,” he growled. Croft and Levy came along, and when the other man dropped out, Gallagher felt cheated. “What’s the matter?” he asked. “You going chickenshit? You’re only gonna get your fuggin head blown off tomorrow.” His statement was lost in the skittering of the money onto the folded blanket upon which they were playing, but it left him with a cold shuddering anxiety as though he had blasphemed. “Hail Mary, mother of…” he repeated quickly to himself. He saw himself lying on the beach with a bloody nub where his head should have been.

His next card fell, a spade. Would they ship his body home, he wondered, and would Mary come to his grave? The self-pity was delicious. For an instant he longed for the compassion in his wife’s eyes. She understood him, he told himself, but as he tried to think of her, he saw instead a picture of ‘… Mary, mother…’ which had remained in his memory from some postcard reproductions of religious paintings he had bought in parochial school. What did Mary, his Mary, look like? He strained to remember, to form her face exactly in his mind. But he could not at this moment; it eluded him like the melody of a half-recalled song that kept shifting back into other, more familiar tunes.

He drew a heart on the next card. That gave him four hearts and there would be two more chances to pull the fifth heart. His anxiety eased and then was translated to a vital interest in the game. He looked about him. Levy was folding his hand even before the round of betting started, and Croft was showing a pair of tens. Croft bet two pounds, and Gallagher decided that he had the third ten. If Croft’s hand didn’t improve, and Gallagher was certain it wouldn’t, then Croft would be playing right into his flush.

Wilson giggled a little and fumbled sloppily for his money. As he dropped it onto the blanket he said, “This yere’s gonna be a mighty big pot.” Gallagher fingered his few remaining bills and told himself this was the last opportunity to come back. “Raise you two,” he muttered, and then felt a kind of panic. Wilson was showing three spades. Why hadn’t he noticed it before? His luck!

The bet, however, was only called, and Gallagher relaxed. Wilson didn’t have the flush yet. It was at least even between them, and Wilson might have no other spades in the hole; he might even be trying for something else. Gallagher hoped they both wouldn’t check to him on the next round. He was going to raise until his money gave out.

Croft, Staff Sergeant Croft, was feeling another kind of excitement after the next row of cards was turned up. He had been drifting sullenly until then, but on the draw he picked up a seven, which gave him two pair. At that instant, he had a sudden and powerful conviction that he was going to win the pot. Somehow, he knew he was going to pull a seven or a ten for a full house. Croft didn’t question it. A certainty as vivid as this one had to mean something. Usually he played poker with a hard shrewd appreciation of the odds against drawing a particular card, and an effective knowledge of the men against whom he played. But it was the margin of chance which existed in poker that made the game meaningful to him. He entered everything with as much skill and preparation as he could bring to it, but he knew that things finally would hang also on his luck. This he welcomed. He had a deep unspoken belief that whatever made things happen was on his side, and now, after a long night of indifferent cards, he had a potentially powerful hand.

Gallagher had drawn another heart, and Croft figured him for a flush. Wilson’s three spades had not been helped by the diamond he had drawn, but Croft guessed that he had his flush already and was playing quietly. It had always struck Croft how slyly Wilson played in contrast to his good-natured, easygoing air.

“Bet two pounds,” Croft said.

Wilson threw two into the pot, and then Gallagher jumped him. “Raise you two.” That made it certain Gallagher had his flush, Croft decided.

He dropped four pounds neatly on the blanket. “And raise youtwo.” There was a pleasurable edge of tension in his mouth.

Wilson chuckled easily. “Goddam, this is gonna be a big pot,” he told them. “Ah ought to drop out, but Ah never could git out of the habit of peekin’ at that last card.”

And now Croft was convinced that Wilson had a flush too. He could see that Gallagher was uncertain — one of Wilson’s spades was an ace. “Raise you two,” Gallagher said a little desperately. If he had the full house already, Croft told himself, he’d raise Gallagher all night, but now it would be better to save some money for the last round.

He dropped two more pounds on the pile over the blanket, and Wilson followed him. Levy dealt the last card face-down to each of them. Croft, containing his excitement, looked about the half-dark hold, gazed at the web of bunks that rose all about them, tier on tier. He watched a soldier turn over in his sleep. Then he picked up his last card. It was a five. He shuffled his cards slowly, bewildered, wholly unable to believe that he could have been so wrong. Disgusted, he threw down his hand without even checking to Wilson. He was just beginning to feel angry. Quietly, he watched them bet, saw Gallagher put down his last bill.

“Ah’m makin’ an awful mistake, but Ah’ll see ya,” Wilson said. “What ya got, boy?”

Gallagher was truculent as though he knew he were going to be beaten. “What the fug do ya think I got — it’s a flush in hearts, jack up.”

Wilson sighed. “Ah hate to do this to ya, boy, but Ah got ya in spades with that bull.” He pointed to his ace.

For several seconds Gallagher was silent, but the dark lumps on his face turned a dull purple. Then he seemed to burst all at once. “Of all the mother-fuggin luck, that sonofabitch takes it all.” He sat there quivering.

A soldier in a bunk near the hatch raised himself irritably on one elbow, and shouted, “For Chrissake, Jack, how about shutting up and letting us get some sleep.”

“Go fug yourself,” Gallagher yelled.

“Don’t you men know when to quit?”

Croft stood up. He was a lean man of medium height but he held himself so erectly he appeared tall. His narrow triangular face was utterly without expression under the blue bulb, and there seemed nothing wasted in his hard small jaw, gaunt firm cheeks and straight short nose. His thin black hair had indigo glints in it which were emphasized by the light, and his gelid eyes were very blue. “Listen, trooper,” he said in a cold even voice, “you can just quit your pissing. We’ll play our game any way we goddam please, and if you don’t like it, I don’t figure there’s much you can do, unless you want to mess with four of us.”

There was an indistinct muttered reply from the bunk, and Croft continued looking at him. “If you’re really looking for something, you can mess with me,” Croft added. His speech was quiet and clearly enunciated with a trace of a southern accent. Wilson watched him carefully.

This time the soldier who had complained made no answer at all, and Croft smiled thinly, sat down again. “You’re lookin’ for a fight, boy,” Wilson told him.

“I didn’t like the tone that boy was using,” Croft said shortly Wilson shrugged. “Well, let’s get goin’ again,” he suggested.

“I’m quitting,” Gallagher said.

Wilson felt bad. There just wasn’t any fun in it he decided, to take a man for all the money he had. Gallagher was most of the time a nice fellow, and it made it doubly mean when you took a buddy you’d slept in the same pup tent with for three months. “Listen, boy,” he offered, “they ain’t no point in bustin’ up a game ’cause a man goes broke. Lemme stake you to some of them pounds.”

“Nah, I’m quitting,” Gallagher repeated angrily.

Wilson shrugged again. He couldn’t understand these men like Croft and Gallagher who took their poker so damn hard. He liked the game, and they wasn’t gonna be much of a way to pass the time now till morning, but it wasn’t that important. A stack of money spread before you was a good feeling, but he’d rather drink. Or have a woman. He chuckled sadly. A woman was a long way off.