SOURCE: "Cold War, Religious Revival and Family Alienation: William Styron, J. D. Salinger and Edward Albee," in Existentialism and Alienation in American Literature, International Publishers Co., 1965, pp. 211-42.
In this excerpt, Finkelstein discusses Styron's novella in the context of the Cold War period, and he notes what he considers Styron's accurate portrayal of the military's complete disregard for the value of human life.
