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The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer | Introduction & Overview

This Study Guide consists of approximately 107 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of The Naked and the Dead.
This section contains 221 words
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The Naked and the Dead Introduction

Published in 1948, The Naked and the Dead earned overwhelming popular and critical acclaim. Most reviewers deemed the novel to be one of the best war stories ever written, praising Mailer's realistic depiction of men at war. The novel focuses on the adventures of a fourteen-man infantry platoon stationed on a Japanese-held island in the South Pacific during World War II In the course of the novel, the men struggle to survive and find meaning in their lives.

In his introduction to the fiftieth-anniversary edition of the novel, Mailer asserted that The Naked and the Dead reflects what he learned from Tolstoy: "compassion is of value and enriches our life only when compassion is severe, which is to say when, we can perceive everything that is good and bad about a character but are still able to feel that the sum of us as human beings is probably a...
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This section contains 221 words
(approx. 1 page at 300 words per page)
Purchase our The Naked and the Dead Study Guide
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The Naked and the Dead from BookRags and Gale's For Students Series. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.
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