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. 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. 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. 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. 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. It is a melancholy and confusing feeling. 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. This is a novel of many voices, each individualized and each specifically unique and amusingly detailed. 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. 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. They will come to understand the practical intricacies of making war. They will know what a crowded ship full of men will smell like. They will understand what needs to happen to take a hill. The reader will indeed learn which gun is which and which rank is which. Although it has all the realistic, gritty detailing that any novel recounting World War 2 Guadalcanal should have, it is so much more. This is more than a classic of combat fiction it is one of the most significant explorations of male identity in American literature, establishing Jones as a novelist of the caliber of Herman Melville and Stephen Crane.Ī true masterpiece and one of my favorite novels. The descriptions of combat conditions-and the mental states it induces-are unflinchingly realistic, including the dialog (in which a certain word Norman Mailer rendered as "fug" 15 years earlier in The Naked and the Dead appears properly spelled on numerous occasions). James Stein, his psychotic first sergeant Eddie Welsh, and the young privates they send into battle. The narrative shifts effortlessly among multiple viewpoints within C-for-Charlie Company, from commanding officer Capt. Such is the ultimate significance of war in The Thin Red Line (1962), James Jones's fictional account of the battle between American and Japanese troops on the island of Guadalcanal. More important: Not only would it be pointless, it would have been pointless, all along." Who cared? It was not pointless only to him and when he was dead, when he ceased to exist, it would be pointless to him too. It was pointless to the tree, it was pointless to every man in his outfit, pointless to everybody in the whole world. Whether he looked at a tree or not was pointless. When compared to the fact that he might be dead tomorrow, everything was pointless. Charlie Dale Credits Director Terrence Malick Screenplay Terrence Malick Based on the novel by James Jones Producer Robert Michael Geisler Producer John Roberdeau Producer Grant Hill Executive producer George Stevens Jr."When compared to the fact that he might very well be dead by this time tomorrow, whether he was courageous or not today was pointless, empty.
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