“In the heart of the forests great trees grew almost a hundred yards high, their lowest limbs sprouting out two hundred feet from the ground. Beneath them, filling the space, grew other trees whose shrubbery hid the giant ones from view. And in the little room left, a choked assortment of vines and ferns, wild banana trees, stunted palm flowers, brush and shrubs squeezed against each other, raised their burdened leaves to the doubtful light that filtered through, sucking for air and food like snakes at the bottom of a pit.”

This imagery of the island suggests the way the geography will become an obstacle, with the density of the lines creating a heavy, crowded effect that adds to the tone of general oppression. The island is often described as a primeval place, the opposite of civilization. The references to snakes alludes to the Biblical Garden of Eden, comparing the island to a paradise that is about to be destroyed.

“For that instant the façade had been peeled back, and a naked animal closeted with its bone had been exposed.”3

Hearn experiences a moment in which the General, who has been calm and fearsomely capable throughout the campaign, snaps at him, revealing the pressure the General is under to make his attack a success. This is one of many images suggesting that the life-and-death conflict of war reduces men to their most primitive, animalistic natures.

“Any one of them could be gone by tomorrow. It was horrible the way a man could be killed.”

Roth’s reflection on a night the men hear artillery firing in the distance, and know combat is happening elsewhere, touches on the vulnerability the men frequently feel at having their lives in constant danger. How the different characters try to reconcile themselves to the thought of death, or find protection in explosive moments, speaks to The Dehumanizing Impacts of Violence.

“He had always imagined combat as exciting, with no misery and no physical exertion. He dreamed of himself charging across a field in the face of many machine guns, but in the dream there was no stitch in his side from running too far while bearing too much weight.”

Wyman’s image of soldiering as heroic provides a stark contrast with the reality he faces with the physical challenges, not just of combat but of daily labor. Throughout, Mailer works against common cultural depictions of war as an act of valor by showing in realistic detail both the mundanity of most activities and the carnage of combat.

“The Army works best when you’re frightened of the man above you, and contemptuous of your subordinates.”

The General’s lecturing to Hearn reflects his interest in strategy, which has little regard for the men, who are treated as an expendable resource. The General’s high-level view of battle tactics contrasts with the reality experienced by the recon platoon on the ground, showing the difference between the experience of officers and that of the enlisted men. His love of hierarchy and contempt for his subordinates reflects The Performance of Masculinity and Dominance in the Army.

“Don’t kid yourself […] a man’s no more important than a goddamn cow.”

Red says this as he remembers attacking the Japanese soldiers in the hollow and knows that Croft killed one of the prisoners. Red is one of the men who promotes the perspective that the Army as a whole has no regard for men’s lives: In comparing them to cows, who can be killed for food, he captures the view that soldiers are considered a resource to the higher-ups.

“Very deep inside himself he was thinking that this was a man who had once wanted things, and the thought of his own death was always a little unbelievable to him. The man had had a childhood, a youth and a young manhood, and there had been dreams and memories.”

Accompanying his realization about the fragility of human life, Red recognizes that the Japanese are men like him, fellow humans who have similar emotional experiences and want the same things. This realization provides a contrast to The Erosion of Moral Agency in War, raising the moral question around why they are fighting.

“He walked back, examining the seaweed and driftwood along the beach. All dead things, he thought, everything lives to die.”

Roth, like Red, feels like an outsider in the platoon, and his perspective creates tension with the need for the group to work together for their own survival. While the image of the dead kelp becomes a symbol for the loss of life due to war, this passage also functions as foreshadowing for Roth’s death in Part 3 as the men climb Mount Anaka.

“A mile or two away over the sullen torpid water, Anopopei was almost obscured by haze, and the sun, a smudged yellow, burned a fierce gap through the sluggish vault of the clouds. Even on the water it was extremely hot.”

Hearn’s view of the island as he makes a supply run to one of the ships represents how his place as an aide to General Cummings is becoming a hostile situation for him. The unfamiliar climate for the Americans adds further obstacles to their discomfort, as the island itself comes to represent the forces they must battle.

“The average man always sees himself in relation to other men as either inferior or superior. Women play no part in it. They’re an index, a yardstick among other gauges, by which to measure superiority.”

The characters take various turns expressing their personal philosophies on life, and each, as Cummings’s statement here, provides insight into his character and motivations. Cummings provides an image of The Performance of Masculinity and Dominance that is subscribed to by other characters in the book, with relations between men reduced to competition and women misogynistically sidelined as an “index, a yardstick” to measure masculine self-worth.

“All the bright young people of his youth had butted their heads, smashed against things until they got weaker and the things still stood.”

This image of meeting implacable barriers to their dreams for change and hopes for success captures Hearn’s sense of restlessness and dissatisfaction. Hearn also expresses a larger philosophy of the book of feeling trapped and overrun by a larger structure or system, invoking The Erosion of Moral Agency in War. Hearn worries that even those who try to resist systems are ultimately unsuccessful, reinforcing his sense of powerlessness.

“He looked at the body and turned away. There was an envelope of intense silence about it. There’s something different about a guy when he’s dead, Minetta thought.”

The death of the wounded soldier who is brought into the tent in the hospital becomes a turning point in Minetta’s scheme to try to get discharged from the Army. The terror of facing death makes him leave the hospital to try to return to his platoon, where he feels at least some sense of safety in being with the group.

“But the initial investment was cheap enough. A dozen or fifteen men and if it went badly for them nothing was lost.”

This tally shows the General’s conception of the men as a resource, an investment, as he calculates the potential profit and loss of his attack strategy. His approach bears out what enlisted men like Red and others have expressed—their superior officers don’t actually care if they live or die. This becomes part of the complex moral and philosophical questions surrounding The Dehumanizing Impacts of Violence the novel raises.

“Ah tell you, men, Ah don’ even ‘member what that chickenshit Toglio looks like any more. But Ah’ll never forget he got out on a busted elbow.”

Wilson’s speech provides an example of the dialect and diction Mailer uses to make the men’s voices distinct, even when their concerns are the same. This line from a Chorus discussing the “million-dollar wound” undercuts the notion of war as valorous or soldiers as bravely heroic, as the men all agree they’d love to be wounded just enough to go home.

“Most of them had hard faces; their eyes were blank with something cold and removed in their expression. As a group they had a forbidding and rigid quality as though they no longer held an excess bit of weight nor a surplus emotion.”1

Hearn’s description of the men of recon as they set out on their patrol to cross the island shows what they have suffered through the previous experiences of combat, reflecting The Dehumanizing Impacts of Violence. The blankness and rigidity at their setting out into danger is contrasted later by the delirious laughter and singing when they return, learn the campaign is over, and they are momentarily safe.

“The mountain seemed wise and powerful, and terrifying in its size.”

From the morning of the first invasion, Mount Anaka becomes a symbol for the implacable obstacles the characters face and the hubris of Croft. The final defeat in their attempt to cross it, at Croft’s insistence, comes to represent everything in the men’s lives that keeps them from accomplishing their goals.

“It was a sensual isle, a Biblical land of ruby wines and golden sands and indigo trees. The men stared and stared. The island hovered before them like an Oriental monarch’s conception of heaven, and they responded to it with an acute and terrible longing. It was a vision of all the beauty for which they had ever yearned, all the ecstasy they had ever sought.”

The beauty of the sunset as the men of recon approach the beach to land for their patrol offers a rare moment of scenic beauty and communion with nature. The incongruity of the island seeming a tropical paradise shows in the next day when their trek through the jungle becomes exhausting, while the symbolism of the sunset hints that some of the men will not survive.

“Everything in him had come undone. The impulse to cover his head and wait passively for the fight to terminate was very powerful. […] With everything, with the surprising and unmanning fear was a passionate disgust with himself.”

Hearn’s reaction during combat is typical of Mailer’s depictions, showing the reactions of fear and paralysis and the very natural urge to crouch and hide until the danger is past. This depiction not only works against standard ideals about heroism in battle but speaks to The Erosion of Moral Agency in War, as the men usually feel helpless and trapped instead of active agents in a worthy cause.

“War, or rather, war, was odd […] It was all covered with tedium and routine, regulations and procedure, and yet there was a naked quivering heart to it which involved you deeply when you were thrust into it.”

Cummings’s reflection captures how the brief and terrifying bursts of combat in a war scenario are balanced with the tedium of ordinary actions, like taking meals or working labor details. This full picture is part of the novel’s realism and refusal to glamorize combat.

“Wilson had been in the platoon as long as [Red]. It was different when a replacement was knocked off […] That didn’t affect you, that didn’t touch your safety. If Wilson was gone, his turn was next.”

The novel shows how, when confronting the fear of death, several of the characters engage in a kind of superstitious bargaining or mental calculus, trying to find logic in the unknown. Red’s assessment also reveals the bonds that their shared experiences build between the men, even across lines of ethnicity, upbringing, and socioeconomic class.

“He was continually eager to press on to the next rise, anxious to see what was beyond. The sheer mass of the mountain inflamed him.”

Croft’s obsession with the mountain becomes a personal crusade to conquer the obstacles in his path and to prevail over a much greater force. Croft’s obsession with the mountain speaks to his hubris and The Performance of Masculinity and Dominance, as the trek serves no other purpose apart from satisfying Croft’s personal vanity.

“Everything was getting out of control. The Major felt as if he were holding a dozen packages in his arms and the first few were beginning to work loose already. How much would he have to juggle?”

One of the ironies of the book that undercuts notions of valor in war or heroism in strategy is the accidental way that Major Dalleson’s decisions end the campaign with a victory for the American side. The image of dropping packages suggests the Major’s feelings of ineptitude, and also reveals how he is thinking of the attack in terms of logistics, not lives.

“It confused them, irritated them, they didn’t know whether the news pleased them or not. The patrol should have been worth something. In their fatigue this conflict brought them close to hysteria and then shifted them over to mirth.”

The men here discover that the horrors and challenges of the patrols did not, in the end, contribute anything to the success of the campaign. This renders their labor and the loss of life meaningless. The giddiness of the survivors at the end, when compared to their grimness when setting out, captures their relief at momentarily feeling they have achieved rest and safety.