The Caine Mutiny | Literary Criticism & Book Review

The Caine Mutiny Critical Overview

Despite his status as a Pulitzer Prize winner and best-selling author, most literary critics do not like the work of Herman Wouk. As an anonymous reviewer in Time noted, Wouk "spearheads a mutiny against the literary stereotypes of rebellion- against three decades of U.S. fiction dominated by skeptical criticism, sexual emancipation, social protest, and psychoanalytic sermonizing." The Wouk hero is not the outlaw gunslinger of the dime-store novel, the migrant worker of Steinbeck, or the bongo-thumping poets of the gathering Beat Generation. Moreover, Wouk intentionally refuses to give in to pop-psychology, Freudianism, or the fascination with sociopaths. Instead he prefers to tell realistic tales in which the hero is a true patriot upholding American ideals. Such a story was considered anachronistic and derivative at the time.

Frederic I. Carpenter, in "Herman Wouk and the Wisdom of Disillusion," was very specific in his disfavor. Wouk, while engaging, is too moralistic,...
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